Joe Heim thought the crowd was "youngish".
At Black Cat, Broken Social Scene Is Beyond Repair
Saturday, March 27, 2004; Page C02
For a little-known band, Toronto's Broken Social Scene has lots of people who know about it. A youngish crowd filled a sold-out and smoky Black Cat on Thursday night to pay homage to this dreamo emo ensemble as it spent 90 minutes crooning and mooning through the atmospheric indie-pop of its new EP, "Bee Hives," and two earlier albums, "You Forgot It in People" and "Feel Good Lost."
Ninety minutes has never felt longer. Broken Social Scene is not a jam band, but it shares the tendencies of such bands for pretentious, self-indulgent playing and tiresome, feedback-driven sonic journeys. The results are almost cataclysmically boring.
At its core, the band is a six-piece -- three guitars, keyboard, bass and drums. Occasionally lead singer Kevin Drew would switch from keyboards to guitar as well, and rarely has an extra guitar been employed to such little additional benefit. Friends and musicians from the night's opening band, the Stars, joined in on some songs with horns, backing vocals and the mandatory emo show hand-clapping.
Even with the extra help, the band was only occasionally able to break free of its own dismal offerings to create anything that was particularly engaging. A notable exception was "Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl," sung by the Stars singer Amy Millan, who repeated the snarling chorus, "Park that car / drop that phone / sleep on the floor / dream about me," with a startling ferocity. Such moments, however, were few and far between. This was mostly tedious art-rock that was neither arty enough nor rocked.
-- Joe Heim
