Broken Social Scene set up shop at Denver, CO’s Summit Music Hall on Wednesday to continue celebrating the 20th anniversary of its breakout album, You Forgot It In People. Just a block away from Coors Field, the sort of vast venue frequented by many of the arena-rock giants influenced by Broken Social Scene, Kevin Drew and co. presented the 1,100-capacity warehouse venue with a wall of sound befitting of a much bigger space.

The Toronto darling’s key members (sadly missing drumming wiz Justin Peroff) took the Summit stage just after 9:00 p.m. with now-grey hair and indie-casual clothes like a musical army. Drew, once the coolest man in indie rock, was understandably more subdued than 20 or even 15 years ago, sporting a big black baseball cap and black sweatshirt, moving around the stage to provide vocals, rhythm guitar, keyboards, and even bass.

Broken Social Scene captivated music-lovers in the early aughts as a “collective”; Drew, the young, charismatic star of the sprawling band, shared songwriting duties with elder statesman Brendan Canning and split lead vocals with lead guitarist Andrew Whiteman and a revolving door of supremely talented women (Feist, Amy Milan, Emily Haines, et al) who passed through BSS on their way to fronting their own projects. The creative highs of You Forgot It In People represent that collective’s exciting peak, but what do you when a band’s power is greater than the sum of its parts and it continually loses those parts?

20 years later, Broken Social Scene again answered that question on its Denver tour stop: Keep playing great live shows with whatever parts will join you on tour to play the songs your fans hold dear and always be aware that the name of the band is a tongue-in-cheek answer, anyway.

Whiteman, contrasting his indie-casual bandmates as usual in a beautiful white suit, provided lead guitar as sinewy as ever, begging the question as he often does, “What if Andrew Whiteman had been in a jamband?” Equally impressive last night was Stars multi-instrumentalist Evan Cranley, a longtime Broken Social Scene collaborator. He moved around from guitar to bass to keyboard to horns and even percussion. The absence of Peroff has been noticeable on this tour, but Cranley and the eight other musicians on stage at Summit filled any gaps admirably. There were almost always four guys playing electric guitar, and the Denver crowd—mostly people in their 40’s re-living their indie-rock 20’s—bopped and sang along to dynamic, well-rehearsed versions of You Forgot It In People classics and a few curveballs.

You can’t really do a Broken Social Scene show without a female vocalist, and Jill Harris delivered several fantastic leads. With Feist, Amy Milan, and Emily Haines studio delivery so engrained in the mind of fans, making those parts your own is a tall task for any live vocalist. Unlike some past BSS singers, however, Harris succeeded by just being herself and having fun. She soared on the fan-favorite “7/4 Shoreline”, which sounds a little like Sly and the Family Stone playing Pearl Jam’s “arena-rock punk rock,” nailing Feist’s part while egging the crowd to sing along.

Drew, in part because of Broken Social Scene’s beloved Live at Lollapalooza 2006 release, is known for egging crowds on himself—“Clap your hands if you’re alive!”—but offered almost no banter as Broken Social Scene ripped through the first several songs. Suddenly, however, he perked up. “I have to be honest with you,” he commented. “I said ‘I don’t think Denver works for us.’ We’re here because Brendan said ‘no.’ Give it up for Brendan Canning.”

From there, the group launched into “Cause = Time” a track that ranks among “Expressway to Yr. Skull,” “Rockin’ In the Free World” and others as one of rock’s great guitar songs. While “Cause = Time” is Broken Social Scene’s “Thunder Road”— one song that encapsulates every single thing that’s great about a great artist—it’s songs like “Lover’s Spit” and “Sweetest Kill” (part of a “love song” suite played near the end of the group’s Summit set) that make concert-goers close their eyes and, to quote a phrase, surrender to the flow. The explorative “Lover’s Spit”, in particular, sometimes feels like Broken Social Scene’s “Dark Star”.

Drew, who at one point grabbed a record from the audience for the whole band to sign and hand back, called Denver “the gig of the tour” and added, “We’ve been doing this for a long time and we do it because of you.”

As the band that provided a road map to truly independent success in rock music prepared to move its tour along to Iowa, Drew had one more message for the attentive Denver audience “before I send you back to your lives”: “Remember you gotta help each other out, because that’s all you really got.”

For a complete list of upcoming Broken Social Scene tour dates, head here.

Setlist: Broken Social Scene | Summit Music Hall | Denver, CO | 10/5/22

Set: KC Accidental, Stars and Sons, Almost Crimes, Looks Just Like the Sun, Pacific Theme, Cause = Time, 7/4 (Shoreline), Fire Eye’d Boy, Stay Happy, Fuzz, Late Nineties Bedroom Rock for the Missionaries, Shampoo Suicide, I’m Still Your Fag, Sweetest Kill, Hug of Thunder, Lover’s Spit, Ibi Dreams of Pavement (A Better Day), Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl