Big is beautiful

So I went to see Broken Social Scene last night at the Beaumont Club in KC's cool and slightly seedy Westport neighborhood. I'm getting closer to something like old, as I'm feeling in almost every part of my body the hazy afterglow of a great show.

I appreciate a great power trio and opening act Land of Talk was a very tasty musical morsel. I liked them so much I bought their new CD, "Some Are Lakes." Definitely worth a listen. Lead singer reminds me a lot of early, teen-aged Natalie Merchant-era 10,000 Maniacs, when they were still punk. The title track is particularly fun.

How do I describe Broken Social Scene? Hmm...

Most things I've read about the band feel compelled to mention that they're great (which they are) and that they're from Canada, as if that's some remarkable point. I don't see why. Our neighbors to the north produced Rush, after all, still one of the greatest prog rock outfits ever. And if Iceland can give birth to Bjork, Canada certainly has the right to rock greatness.

BSS is big music.

Every once in a while the goddess of music transits her hand across the aural constellations and lines things up in the same place at the same time and something transcendent happens. In 1999, that happened in Montreal, and BSS was born, a motley crew of musical polymaths who strayed from one instrument to the other during a non-stop set that lasted two hours and was still going strong when I left the club slightly before midnight.

BSS is wonderful. They're a stone soup of influences: the Clash, P/Funk, Green Day. They love to interweave staccato guitar lines with quiet, tension-filled moments that build and build until you realize the barbarians are definitely at the gates and actually you've been overrun and you might as well slap on face paint and start dancing like everybody else. Tribal.

Co-founder Kevin Drew (below left) is the group's frontman, in as much as he sang slightly more than anyone else. If Warren Beatty's character from "McCabe & Mrs. Miller," (below right) instead of being shot to death, was transported to 2008 and made a alt rocker, that's Drew. Fellow BSS founder and bassist Brendan Canning had some fun, including some old school stage diving. It's not fair, I know, but Canning sounds uncannily like Rush bassist and lead singer Geddy Lee. Is it a Canadian thing? Either way, Canning and Drew have built an impressive stable of fine musicians, which is always a good thing.

I know that BSS is sometimes called (or accused of being) a jam band. I'll deny that 'till the day I die. Every song they played was composed. It had a pointed beginning, middle and end, with appropriate--though not predictable--rising and falling motions throughout. There was purpose to their noise making. They may share some traits with jam bands, in as much as they're very democratic while on stage. But they're not a jam band, and I don't want to hear another word about it.

One shoutout: Though everyone else had some time in the green room during the show, drummer Justin Peroff (left) sat on his throne and kept the band's musical "stuff" together. That's the hardest working man in show business these days.

Two revelations: (1) BSS has the best brass section I've heard since I last saw B.B. King, and they were used perfectly to spice things up. (2) Guitarist (and sometimes bass player) Andrew Whiteman (right) was easily the most charismatic person on stage and his playing was brilliant. Wielding his guitar like a red cape, he posed and strutted like a torero at a Spanish bull fight. Whiteman also helms the band Apostle of Hustle, and I want to hear more.