Broken Social Scene Played Outside Lands

Earlier in the week, we mentioned that we had managed to get up close and personal for one show at last weekends Outside Lands Festival. Well kids: here you are. Broken Social Scene played the Twin Peaks stage to a massive crowd for the second-to-last set on Sunday evening. The set was awesome, inspirational, and most of all fun.

Andrew Whiteman

The band was in full effect, and as close to a "full line-up" as we've seen since Feist opened for BSS at the Regency Grand. Andrew Whiteman was on guitar, Amy Milan came out for "Anthems For A Seventeen Year Old Girl", and the usual trio of Brendan Canning/Kevin Drew/Justin Peroff were present and accounted for. Never one to skimp on numbers, the band of course had numerous other members playing horns, guitars, and synths throughout the set. This included the first we had seen of Montreal-ite Liz Powell, who is also the lead singer for the band Land Of Talk.

Brendan Canning

Ostensibly this appearance, despite being part of a festival, was part of the tour for BSS' latest. There were a decent number of tracks from the most recent BSS Presents...Brendan Canning's Something For All Of Us..., although Canning seemed hesitant to really dominate the microphone. By contrast, it seemed to come rather naturally to Kevin Drew, as he fell into his usual bandleader role. Still, Canning's new material was a welcome addition, and played very well with the crowd.

Liz Powell

In addition to the newer material the band offered up a fair number of their older tracks, including a surprising "Pacific Theme" opener, and a leg-kicking rendition of "KC Accidental". Drew pulled "Pressure Kids" out from his Presents... disc, while Whiteman delivered a solid version of "Fire Eyed Boy", and Powell admirably covered the vocal duties on "7/4 Shoreline".

Kevin Drew

The band wrapped up the set with a cathartic rendition of "Ibi Dreams Of Pavement". They were joined on stage by former Pavement guitarist Spiral Stairs, and managed to induce the crowd to engage in wave after wave of enthusiastic screams. Really, this is one of those bands that you must see live in order to understand. We're consistently amazed every time we see them at how consistently they deliver a killer live show. Thankfully, this appearance at Outside Lands pulled in many, many, more people to the Broken Social Scene experience.

More photos over at the H.A.D. Archive
Pro-shot videos of most tracks are up on YouTube