Concert Review: Broken Social Scene

Wonder Ballroom, Portland, OR
09/26/2022

What does the album title You Forgot It in People mean? After hearing Kevin Drew take the mic as the other members of Broken Social Scene (nine total on this occasion) flooded the stage around him, it feels clearer: “it” is a placeholder that represents the things we value in others, like openness, kindness and empathy. The idea that we all forgot it in people over the last two-and-a-half years of COVID Isolation Blues (and the last decade of near-constant political strife, plus the inaction of local government in helping the houseless) was, in this way, half of the reason they were doing a tour to play the entire album (though not in order, and while leaving out the instrumental tracks “Capture the Flag” and “Pitter Patter Goes My Heart”). Never mind the fact that it celebrates its 20th birthday in just three weeks. More than a good excuse to play their best album, it was an excuse to bring people together. Isn’t that what social scenes are supposed to do?

As though sensing that we should all be on our best behavior, the crowd was one of the most laidback and respectful in recent memory. Fans of this band often get painted as being boring, and maybe they — we — are, but at least we can behave ourselves. Maybe, though, it’s just that Broken Social Scene is a very chill band for one that is also often very loud. Blame it on their ability to cultivate an atmosphere, which has never been stronger than it was on You Forgot It in People. It’s purely nocturnal in tone, existing in the same space as Yo La Tengo’s And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out and Frank Sinatra’s In the Wee Small Hours, and even when they get into distortion barrages (“Almost Crimes,” “KC Accidental”), it all still feels like it was meant to be heard and performed in rooms with twilight surrounding them.

Cast in dark blues and purples with a tasteful amount of spotlighting on the band themselves, it felt like the closest approximation possible for that (admittedly silly) imagined setting — which is to say, the atmosphere could not have been better. Truly, the only thing that was missing was teenage audience members having coming-of-age moments with their friends while the band played “Anthems for a Seventeen-Year-Old-Girl” or “Lover’s Spit” — these shows were 21+, which feels like an unfair restriction, as those teens deserve a safe space to forge overly rose-tinted, lifelong memories.

Sonically, they were impossibly tight. They should be, really — one of the things that takes the wind out of this tour’s sails is that, if you’ve seen Broken Social Scene a couple times, there’s a chance you’ve already seen them play most of these 11 songs before, usually with a high percentage in any given show. The only outlier is the unbearably grossly titled “I’m Still Your Fag,” which (according to setlist.fm, at least) is only dusted off once or twice every year. That’s a shame, really; the title is pretty vile, and it’s arguable that nobody ever needed a song about gay repression from Kevin Drew, but it’s an otherwise beautiful song whose loose percussion and gentle atmosphere make it one of the dreamiest songs on an already dreamy record. Outside of the You Forgot It in People tracks, we got the usual suspects of a Broken Social Scene performance: “Ibi Dreams of Pavement (A Better Day)”! “7/4 (Shoreline)”! “Stay Happy”! A performance like this one leaves very little room to dig into the deep cuts outside of the record, but it would have been great to see something fresher, like “Chase Scene,” or “Sentimental X’s,” or “Major Label Debut.” Perhaps even something from the oft-maligned first album, the instrumental Feel Good Lost?

Truly, the only sour note in the evening came at the introduction of “Ibi Dreams of Pavement (A Better Day.” First, let’s be honest: Drew is a well-meaning man, but the things he says onstage can, at times, walk a line between “that’s a great sentiment” and “why did you post cringe, Kevin?” — a line walked by phrases like, say, his top-of-the-show introduction of “Let’s be in a church we own ourselves.” For “Ibi,” though, Drew told a story about seeing, close-up, the consequences of local government indifference towards helping alleviate the suffering of Portland’s houseless population, which also served as an anecdote about going to a bougie restaurant that was booked out a month. The point of the story was incredibly opaque, and was mostly met with shouts of “Fuck [Portland Mayor] Ted Wheeler!” and “This isn’t helping anything!” — which, alongside both being incredibly valid sentiments, underscored the fact that it felt like a half-hearted call to arms before a choir of the converted. He did squeeze in a still-hyper-powerful George Carlin quote — “You ever notice there’s no war on homelessness? I guess there’s no money to be made there” — into his monologue, but this reminder of a more sharp-witted observer of societal ills only underscored how frustratingly out-of-his-depth he came across, well-meaning though he may have been.

Outside of those moments of questionable banter, the show was an all-out blast with precious few real points to criticize. You Forgot It in People is an album this band can play while roller skating backwards, yet despite having seen them play almost every single song from the setlist before, each one felt fresh in a way that simply can’t be achieved if you’re phoning it in. More than anything, though, it felt like a throwback to a simpler time in concertgoing, when going to see live music could feel like a big, thick blanket on a cold autumn night, rather than a complicated battle to be able to stand in one place and feel comfortable. The band ended “Ibi” with something that is now a staple of Broken Social Scene concerts: Drew leading the audience in a momentary scream therapy session, with the entire audience screaming, as loud as they can, in unison. For as easy as it is to take issue with some of Drew’s stage banter, he’s right on the money in this portion of their shows — especially post-pandemic. As the entire audience — and the band themselves — screamed ourselves momentarily hoarse, it almost felt like being back in time, in a world where we hadn’t forgotten it in people.