I saw Brendan Canning at the Great Scott last Monday and there was a lot to take in.

My only problem with Eksi Ekso is that, while all the pieces were in place, nothing really grabbed my attention. Their sound is great—John Roderick-sounding-vocals, creative synth sounds, horns, they absolutely had my number. I just don’t have a lot to say, which is sort of my job in this scenario. I’ve reconfirmed on Soundcloud: the sound is absolutely there and cohesive and great, it’s just that none of the songs really gave me pause or made me laugh or think or lose it. My weekend was filled with seeing extremely memorable sets and the fact that this one didn’t stand out isn’t a slight against the band, it’s more a testament to who they opened for.

Do you remember when Zooey Deschanel was just invented and just the worst people wouldn’t stop saying “adorkable?” I might have to bring that one back for my review of White Hinterland. JK I won’t, but she was super self-deprecating and would call attention to her mistakes like someone just starting at an open mic, however she did it with this level of confidence that made it endearing instead of cringeworthy. And not endearing like I felt bad for her, endearing like she probably wouldn’t have been as awesome if she had played every note flawlessly.
We tried not clapping that much and standing off to the side and she was not having it. After a small clap, she got up in our faces, explaining that she couldn’t play to something like that (not like a diva, like someone who knows you want to clap more and is dragging it out of you), and twice pulled everyone closer to the stage. This sounds super egotistical, but it was done with this bipolar bashful bravado that evoked a much bigger (sincere) clap and brought everyone closer to the stage both times. Now onto her music.
She is a solo act and how it goes is she plays some Stevie-Wonder-style-Wurlitzer rolling chords and just belts like crazy. It’s eerie and it’s rocking and there’s crowd participation (oh you’d better believe there’s crowd participation, and none of this “can you say ba ba ba.” Like she was handing out crazy riffs like if my old chorus teacher Ms. Phelps did speed). Then she gets proggy, like Gentle Giant/Yes proggy, with these intense solos in strange time signatures that roll right back into her having a good time and pretty much forcing you to have a good time.

Being a solo artist coming from something like BSS is a strange middle ground. He’s one of the main creators behind their sound—there are probably only two or three others who contribute a comparable amount to the huge collective. It’s always been a rotating cast of characters with Canning as one of the main voices and writers. Because they’re on indefinite hiatus, I would have thought there would have been a much larger following that would go out of their way for a solo tour (with of course a full band very much replicating the sound of the band), but the room wasn’t very full. I could chalk this up to the fact that this date was rescheduled from last Fall and people being out of town for the long weekend, and this may have been a contributing factor. I’m not saying this because anyone on stage ever acted like this was beneath them, in fact they were genuinely pleased to be playing their songs in front of us, I just felt pretty guilty for being able to stand right up next to the stage with only a couple dozen other people and see this legend in action.
When Brendan Canning took stage, there was a bit of an on-stage soundcheck/everybody just playing scattered notes. And it was awesome. Brendan and his band droning atempo sounded like the intro or outro of a Broken Social Scene track, so before song number 1 started I was already in a good place. The most recent solo album that he’s touring in support of is called You Gots 2 Chill and true to its name, it’s chill as all get out. It’s reminiscent of Forgiveness Rock Record’s companion EP Lo-Fi For The Dividing Nights (if you haven’t checked this out, do so. It’s super low-commitment, just ten 2-3 minute BSS instrumental songs), but this show was not chill. Sure, there were some valleys of jammy, druggy, spacey rock, but even the purportedly chill stuff was rockified with his six-piece band.
Everything was represented in this hour-or-so set: a little BSS, some from his first solo LP Something For All Of Us, You Gots 2 Chill, some stuff he promised us we did not know yet, and, you guys, a Drake cover. Everything was represented.
The set was chosen to wake people out of complacency, with every crazy rocker followed by a more meditative cacophony of clean guitar and thick basslines. Everyone was tearing it up, but I’d like to give a shout out to the bassist. Don’t stand in back, man. I mean, it’s the territory of the bass guitar, but this guy was keeping it together the whole time, flowing walking whatever the song called for and he was almost unnoticeable with how demure or maybe just how lost he was in what we was doing.
But yeah, everyone was pulling their weight. Three guitars, keyboards, harmonies, a female vocalist who got her own song toward the end of the set. It was the sound he created, developed, and mastered with his band—that surf-rock drumming with countryish guitar licks that combined to sound nothing like country or surf-rock, and it was played to a T so effortlessly.