An Emotional Explosion – Broken Social Scene and Land of Talk at the Vic Theatre 10.09.08

Great show. I had a few reservations going in about seeing Broken Social Scene for the third time in about two months. Mainly that the show at the Metro in August was so powerful and amazing, I wasn’t sure how this could match up. Don’t get me wrong, the show at the Vic the other night was so much fun (Of course, being in the front row at the Vic helped make this an even greater experience on Thursday night…), but there at the Metro in August, there was this crazy energy in the air probably just because it was really late at night.

But the Social Scene delivered once again. When they came out on stage, in my head I dubbed it “Broken Social Scene: fall model” because they were all wearing button down flannel shirts and jackets, as opposed to the fedoras and tank tops that Lollapalooza and its accompanying heat brought. It was a nice, slow build with the initial instrumental jam into Shampoo Suicide, but when that first crescendo hit, I remembered why I love this band so much. It is an emotional explosion. Their songs take all these positive and negative emotions and blast them out from wherever they are hiding. We celebrate the good and the bad. We scream for whatever is inside us. That part of “Ibi Dreams of Pavement” where Kevin Drew counts to three and everyone screams as loud as we can gets me every time. We, as a collective, let everything out of us at that moment. These are no longer are individual hopes and fears, they are everyone’s hopes and fears.