Broken Social Scene - It's All Love

First the good. The lineup for this show was stripped-down, with a steady six players all night instead of the usual dozen or so. They started with the newer material before moving to a more balanced mix between old and new, with witty banter about Canadians, the band, and prior gigs. The band seemed genuinely happy to be back in Seattle, and it felt like the entire audience was just an extension of the BSS family, if only for one night.

And there's the bad. The Moore is the antithesis of cozy, and the lack of room up front forced most of the crowd into the seating. For a show like Sigur Ros, that would work fine, but Broken Social Scene demands more immediacy and feedback, so the layout just didn't work. The show didn't entirely suffer for it, but we really would have preferred The Showbox (at the Market of course). Since Kevin Drew joked about it, seems the band wasn't happy about the venue either.

But why focus on the negative when it was by and large a great show? Broken Social Scene love to play, and Seattlest considers them the only band we'd be willing to follow around in a van, Grateful Dead-style. There's a palpable feeling of comradery that exudes from all the members, and that same joy then extends to the audience. You don't leave a BSS show feeling like you just saw a good band, you leave feeling better about life, the universe, and your place in it. It's truly musical therapy, and not even a less than ideal venue can remove that.