| Broken Social Scene: Corporation Sheffield |
 Somewhere lurking in the darkest recesses of my iTunes is an album, none of its songs feature in my top 25 most played and only a couple have ever had the honour of featuring on one of my extremely exclusive playlists. Over the last three or four days however, Broken Social Scenes stock has risen sharply on my laptop. I play new album Forgiveness Rock Record on my way to work. I sing along to the layered gems on Feel Good Lost in the house.
I freak out my girlfriend with renditions of “Lovers Spit” from You Forgot It In People. What prompted this resurgence you ask? Well the lucky punters who attended the bands set at the Corporation on Friday night could no doubt fill you in. The night kicked off with a brace of blistering indie gems from Leeds upstarts Sky Larkin, who were as always, simply a joy to behold. Katie Harkin’s dreamy voice whisks you away from the dark confines of the notoriously grungy Corp interior and deposits you firmly on green grass in front of some ubiquitous undiscovered stage at a festival. Antibodies joyous poetics, its jangly riffs and the sing song way Katie delivers the line’s “I’ll take office if that’s enough/and order my city to swallow yours up” combine to make the tune an instant classic. After a fairly lengthy interval, Broken Social Scene take to the stage exuding a sort of nonchalant nerdiness that belies the effortless cool that their instruments emit. And when you take into account how many different tools they utilise, that’s a whole load of cool. At times there are as many as 5 guitars pumping out riffs, supported by an auxiliary of brass and string and woodwind, it’s all a little disorienting at times, but wonderfully so. World Sick floats along pleasantly enough prompting raised hands and a few hugs, Texaco bitches see’s a small portion of the attendees go a little crazy down the front, but for the most part the crowd are content to sit back and let the layered interchanging vocals delivered primarily by Kevin Drew and Lisa Lobsinger float over them. That is, until the band up the tempo. Photos: Jamie Boynton The change comes when the band request an audience member join them on stage to deliver a rendition a newly penned tune Forced to Love, a suggestion that is leapt upon with vigour by one chap in the audience. You got the feeling about halfway through that they maybe regretted their selection as he promptly vacated his position at the mic stole Brendans straw hat and bounded around the stage playing the air guitar and doing the “knees-up” like a coked up cockney wide boy. The mood this creates holds for the rest of the set, constant line up alterations take the crowd through a tour-de-force of baroque-indie-art house fusion. There are shades of BRMC, Arcade Fire and The XX, but when the relentless pounding of the drums stop long enough for me to be capable of a cohesive thought process it dawns that BSS were around a long time before any of their contemporaries. You have to wonder how different the tapestry of Indie would be without them, they have no doubt influenced a lot of the genres more avant-garde offerings. The standout track of the night comes from a cropped rendition of Superconnected, delivered with the riotous ecstasy of a band who are clearly in love with what they do, the crowd erupt into rapturous applause and the band vacate the stage, only to be met by a growing chant for one more song, the reception the band receive for the encore is stirring and they look clearly moved by the crowds adoration, its a rare thing to see in recent times. As the night winds down I promise myself that all those old tunes that got mercilessly pushed to the sidelines a few years ago will be getting along awaited resurrection, and they’ve got Broken Social Scene’s amazing performance tonight to thank. Words: Dan Walsh |
