"I'd say Canada's music scene is very healthy at the moment," says Brendan Canning, founding member of Toronto's swollen indie supergroup Broken Social Scene. And he's not wrong. Dozens of diverse Canadian bands are becoming worldwide exports: Montreal's Arcade Fire have swept the globe, selling over 500,000 albums and even finding fans in U2, who have come on stage to their song "Wake Up" every night on their "Vertigo" tour. And other smaller bands are hitting the radar in the wake of Broken Social Scene and Arcade Fire.
Canning's chuffed that his country is back on the music map -- not least because it means more recognition for his own band. "We've seen a lot of bands get popular in Canada and not anywhere else, but for us, our music is stamped in Canada and it's also stamped in the U.S., Europe and the U.K. But I don't want to be obnoxious about it. We're not like Arctic Monkeys or anything, but we're doing OK, and I feel proud to be a part of it."
Since BSS formed in Toronto in 1999, they've become one of Canada's most celebrated bands. With a floating lineup based around bassist Canning and Kevin Drew, the band's extended membership goes well into double figures, sharing musicians with Stars, Feist, Metric and others.