Broken Social Scene live at Michigan Theater lacks the spirit captured on recordings

For a band consisting of as many members on stage as it had at the Michigan Theater tonight, Broken Social Scene certainly didn’t have a lot to say musically.

Indeed, despite swelling at times to as many as nine members at once, the Canadian indie collective came off as something considerably less than its considerable parts.

Not that they didn’t try. In fact, the band seemed to be having fun even as it gamely battled an obviously troublesome on-stage sound mix and tried to keep a positive attitude.

“Ann Arbor, we’re going to have fun,” singer-bandleader Kevin Drew said by way of introduction. “It’s Friday night and this is for you.

“It’s your show.”

Drew and his revolving cast of multi-instrumentalists were earnest and full of energy, blasting through 20-odd tunes during a two-hour show and one encore that bumped up against the band’s 10:30 p.m. curfew.

And even as the band meandered through a set of mostly hookless, largely impenetrable baroque indie rock, the crowd, which nearly filled the theater’s main floor, seemed to eat it up.

Drew isn’t a natural frontman and his stage patter, while sincere, came off as stilted. Meanwhile, he’s a singer of limited range, who generally sounds like he’s trying to emulate either Bono or Thom Yorke, neither of which he pulls off.

Meanwhile, sporting as many as four electronic guitars and two electric basses at once, the band came across as leaden and undynamic — like a steamship plowing through a swimming hole.

There was just too much going on most of the time and too little of it was interesting. Not a single guitar solo stood out. With all those guitars, someone should have been doing something notable.

Which is a shame. Broken Social Scene’s records are full of interesting songs that are marked by their nuance and their tunefulness. Little of that was on display Friday, as the band lumbered through a tune, members changed instruments and then lumbered through another.

And not that there weren’t highlights. “Texico B*tches,” early in the set, found its mark, and Lisa Lobsinger delivered a lovely reading of “Anthems for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl” that contained most of the concert’s nuance.

Broken Social Scene performing “Anthems for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl” live in New York earlier this year: