>>PREVIEW
CALGARY FOLK MUSIC FESTIVAL
Broken Social Scene
July 27 to 30
Prince’s Island Park
Some concerts are packed with hundreds of people and yet still feel like an intimate house party with a room full of best friends. During their last visit to Calgary in autumn of 2005, Toronto’s Broken Social Scene filled the room with epic, soul-soothing songs and transformed a spacious venue into a cosy space.
In the front row stood a broken-hearted kid who has been unceremoniously dumped by his girlfriend earlier that day at school. Hoping that the band would play his request, he told vocalist Kevin Drew about his day. From the stage, Drew shared the story with the empathetic audience. Since Broken Social Scene is the type of band that’s thoroughly fluent in the currency of passion, they performed the request. In turn, the audience partook in the kid’s symbolic victory of achieving a sweet ending to a rotten day.
After a long stretch playing across Europe, Broken Social Scene is back on home soil with rumours that this batch of Canadian gigs may be the last for the immediate future. Understandably, the band is showing signs of wear from the wealth of recent solo releases. With band mates out touring their own projects, it is a bit of a logistical strain to assemble a touring band lineup.
While Feist and Jason Collett continue to enchant all ears who hear them, new releases from Amy Milan and Raising the Fawn have been the latest to beguile music fans. Solo projects from current roommates and Social Scene founders Drew and bassist Brendan Canning will likely and poetically be the last albums out the gate. If their track record is any indication, the two gentlemen will continue their legacy of releasing albums loaded with tremendous creative sparkle.
"Yeah, everyone is working on their own stuff whether it’s a Do Make Say Think record or an Apostle of Hustle record or Amy’s solo record or a Raising the Fawn record," says Canning, fresh home from yet another trip across the Atlantic.
"Kevin is working on solo stuff, I’ve got a bunch of stuff, Justin (Peroff) started a new band with a guy from the Tangiers. I think everyone is just sort of off on their own thing right now. The band doesn’t really feel like it’s together when it’s not out touring, you know what I mean? It just feels slightly elusive when you’re not in the thick of it. The idea sort of vanishes a little bit."
If there was an Amazing Race for musicians, Broken Social Scene would likely be victors. They’ve just completed a stretch of European tours that had them criss-crossing the continent, headlining a large music festival in Berlin and hanging out with Damo Suzuki (Can) in Cologne. They recently returned home to gig with J Mascis (Dinosaur Jr., Witch) on Toronto Island. With Europe under their belt, they may venture to the States this fall if they can find amongst them an available lineup to tour.
Although Canning doesn’t say one way or the other, it seems as though the band would be just as happy to take a well deserved rest in the near future, too.
"I’ve got lots of different ideas that don’t fit into the Broken Social Scene realm of things. A lot more folky stuff… like (there have been) some Bruce Cockburn comparisons. I leave little licks on my answering machine that are just not conducive for eight people to sit around and jam to."
With a collective stacked with this many creative minds (including Calgary’s exquisitely voiced Lisa Lobsinger), the band’s future ought to be just like its past – absolutely dazzling. |
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