Monday 22/05/06 Broken Social Scene @ KOKO, London

Grandiose statements are all too easy to make and difficult to justify. However, Broken Social Scene are big, bold and very much deserving of them.  Aided by their ever-changing numbers, their joyful flood of ideas spills out tonight to coat KOKO’s warm red walls and soothe the sold-out crowds expectant minds.  They have an unnerving ability to cast a hypnotic spell that refuses to stop sparkling for two and a half whole hours.  Not just any band can do this.  BSS are something special. 

Their exuberance and sheer pleasure at playing is totally absorbing.  Their subdued, refreshing confidence manifests itself in the inclusion of ‘Ibi’ second song in.  Live, the song is injected with vigorous muscle, at once upholding quivering bottom lips and softening the stiff British upper one. It dips, teases and trembles into exuberant crescendos, mirroring the set’s glorious emotional rollercoasters between slow-burn beauty and dynamic drama.  When a defiant line of brass steps up, in no uncertain terms, it’s like the fanfare to a new and breathtaking kind of musical camaraderie.

Successfully sidestepping pitfalls of pretension that arise with ‘experimentation’ and epically proportioned sets, BSS mould each track into stunning new live creations.  There’s the same honeycomb layers of female vocals and the same achingly desperate male ones, but punctuated with impassioned sincerity.  Feist prowls and pushes to inject sexy, petulant tantrums and euphoria to a glorious ‘Shoreline’, perfectly offsetting Emily Haines’ ethereally innocent whispered yearnings.  The set swings effortlessly from fearsome tempests like the uplifting, anthemic ‘Superconnected’ to eerily affecting sweetness with depth humility.  With each swooning violin tug-on-heartstrings, they deliver a shot of serotonin in their attitude and powerful choruses.   By the time ‘Hotel’ arrives with it’s sleazy keys and lounging leather bass, apparently there’s “tons and tons of love”.  Frankly, I’m not sure anyone would disagree.

What could be an aimless cluster of people struggling to form the sum of their disparate parts suddenly becomes beautiful, coherent, powerful, poignant.  A precipice of chaos is never far, but somehow a defined underlying narrative and togetherness is constantly upheld, culminating in a joyfully frantic scramble. The glorious finale of ‘its all gonna break’ whirls with soaring violins to elevate the song to new height of hope, dreams and beauty. 

Maybe it’s a big dupe.  Maybe BSS are having the last laugh.  They somehow con us into uniting in pre-encore deranged cries of ‘****’ and disturbing therapeutic whispers of ‘it’s ok…’.  But the thing is, it is ok.  There’s too much cynicism, too celebrating of gloom, misery, car-crash spectatorship: once in a while, cringe-inducing as it seems, maybe we should all just let go.  Celebrate.  Enjoy.  BSS want to “contribute to make the world a better place”.  With a set this full of release, hope and spine-tingling optimism, they may well have achieved it.