Seeing that they were running ahead of schedule at Friday night’s show at Webster Hall (the second of three sold-out shows), Broken Social Scene frontman Kevin Drew decided to introduce the band. “That will eat up some time,” he quipped. He was right; 15 members – nine touring and six guesting – and almost 15 minutes later, they resumed playing.

Despite the name, Broken Social Scene actually testifies to the opposite: the tightly knit and interconnected nature of the Canadian (in this case Toronto) music scene. The band counts members from four or five other well-known Canadian groups – including Do Make Say Think, Metric, and the Weakerthans – and stands alongside countrymen Arcade Fire, Wolf Parade, and Stars as one of the most ambitious outfits in indie rock today. It’s a much-remarked-upon (but little-explained) fact that a disproportionate amount of the genuinely inventive and thrilling music in indie rock now comes from north of the border.

With so many musicians onstage, the trouble wasn’t filling out a room (even one as sound-swallowing as Webster Hall), but keeping the music fresh as the set stretched to nearly 2 1/2 hours. BSS managed it by constantly shifting styles and combinations. The band had a seemingly infinite number of tricks up its sleeves.

The show opened with an impressionistic instrumental piece of spacefloat electronics and horns reminiscent of Miles Davis’s “In a Silent Way.” It was more a palate cleanser than a true beginning, readying the way for the dozen or so styles to come. There were swirling, multi-guitar noise numbers (“KC Accidental”), bland electro-lounge (“Swimmers”), whispery, Prince-styled synth funk (“Hotel”), straight-ahead rockers (“Fire Eye’d Boy”), and reeling, cacophonic idol worship (“Ibi Dreams of Pavement”). A slow version of a song called “Major Label Debut” had a skittering, twinkling quality, like something by Notwist or Mum. A fast version of the same song was rendered as galloping alt-country.

Even the simplest songs had a real thickness to them, sometimes to their detriment. On “Superconnected,” the whitewash of guitars flattened to two dimensions. It was the aural equivalent of snow blindness, producing such a flurry of sound that you could only hear a few inches in front of you.

The band was better when it allowed space for individual instrumentalists – Andrew Whiteman’s snarling cock-rock guitar, a chorus of horns, a winsome fiddle – to emerge from the group and solo over the top. The whole thing was held in place, like stakes in a wind-blown tent, by the muscular drumming, alternately snapping and tribal, of Justin Peroff.

His blonde locks peeking out from behind a black hoodie sweatshirt, Drew was a charismatic frontman and much-needed focal point amid the chaos of people coming and going and sitting and drinking beers onstage. (The performance sometimes looked like a construction site on lunch break.) As a singer, however, he contributed little more than any other instrument. His words were hard to make out, supplying more in the way of texture than substance. The same was true of willowy, barefoot touring singer Lisa Lobsinger.

More thrilling were occasional appearances by erstwhile BSS member Emily Haines, now frontwoman for Brooklyn-by-way-of-Toronto new wave outfit Metric. Standing in a hip-jutting, high-boot stance, she cooed through the hypnotic “Anthems for a 17-Year-Old Girl,” which swelled and swirled around her mesmerizing, repeated lines: “Park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor, dream about me.” All the words ended in a purr.

On “Windsurfing Nation,” a song of fractured, almost mechanical beats and shifting guitar parts, she added staccato, Karen O-inspired shouts (“We won’t be what you want to be, oh no!”). Part of the thrill of Broken Social Scene is that its extended social network includes this kind of talent.