Broken Social Scene, Stars, Metric
The MET
858 N Broad St.
Philadelphia
July 28, 2026
Normally after I attend such a life-affirming, feel-good, sweet show as this one was, I can get up in the morning and write with that positive energy still freshly buzzing in me – and truly, I was beaming from this show – but today’s already been a tearful one. Glen Hansard, the famed Irish musician and songwriter, passed away this morning in Dublin, from a motorcycle accident, at only 56; I learned of it fresh out of sleep. Hansard is one of those musicians who you felt like you knew personally even though you didn’t (though I met him once, and his genuine friendliness left a lasting impression), the kind of artist whose songs you can’t help but invite into deep parts of yourself, whose work I connected with at an especially impressionable and sensitive time in my musical life. It’s an immense loss that slowed me in starting to write today, because I didn’t consciously know how to hold both feelings: the pain and heartache of his untimely passing with the joy and adulation of seeing one of my all-time favorite bands, Broken Social Scene, not to mention incredible, euphoric sets from Stars and Metric, both of which share members and collaborators with BSS.
Now, as I think about it more, I realize that if there’s any point to what BSS stands for in 2026, it’s exactly that: holding both. The longstanding-indie-supergroup-institution is back on the road this year with a new album, Remembering The Humans, their first in almost nine years, and it’s a record that’s not only open-hearted but at times openly broken-hearted; on stage, frontman and de facto bandleader Kevin Drew is repeatedly, directly reminding us, the whole crowd, to hold onto one another, to be there for your friends, to honor the ones we’ve lost, to sing and dance with them in your heart. (Some of that’s a political stance, too, a Canadian show of support to a bedraggled America.) Stars, opening the show, made a similar point, telling us: “If there’s something you and your friends have always wanted to do together, go out and do it, don’t wait.” You could safely say that every song we heard all night was a testament to the fruit of creative friendships fully owned. Introducing “Anthems For A Seventeen Year-Old Girl” – in all its tender, lush, bedroom-longing splendor – Emily Haines spelled it out:
“I was thinking about how songs can feel like a place that you go, and ‘Anthems’ for us is like this room that I get to go into with my friends… and we all just like, walk in the door, and look around – sometimes we move the furniture… What a gift to live inside a song, and we owe it to you guys for that.”
The losses – the deaths – that inform the new songs BSS played, like “Not Around Anymore,” are felt in the impact of the old hits, too. The gravity of years and time, the exponentially-increasing preciousness of it all: it takes the fun and excitement of their music, its sexiness, its lifeblood, and shapes it into tougher stuff, taking on greater dimension but losing none of that youthful lust and luster. The stage was literally swelling with these decades-old friends, dancing, smiling, looking and sounding as good as ever, their guitars gripping and driving, put down and swapped out for brass instruments for golden fanfares and codas, the rhythmic stomp and flair of Justin Peroff’s flawless rock drumming always cajoling not only the band but the Met’s entire massive crowd. I was positively yelping with glee when they launched into a set-closing “Ibi Dreams of Pavement (A Better Day),” a song so drenched in fucked-up-loud guitars that, on the original recording, Drew sounds like a man possessed trying to surmount it with his voice, but last night, he sang it low, mostly down an octave, with Amy Milan – “when I was 13 years old, I met this girl Amy Milan at summer camp” – and Jill Harris singing higher up, in what couldn’t have been a more perfect sonic picture of support and lasting friendship, through the good and the bad. The Bonnie Tyler (RIP) interpolation, getting the whole crowd singing along to the chorus of "Total Eclipse of the Heart," put it over the top in the best way possible, in tried-and-true BSS fashion.
(I want to give a special shout-out to Charles Spearin, Brendan Canning and Jill Harris, for their warmth, generosity and good humor chatting with us after the show.)
