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![]() ![]() This crew’s most famous member is, of course, Feist, the unlikely iPod Nano spokeswoman whose 2007 solo album The Reminder is probably as great, or at least as commercially appealing, as egalitarian Canadian alt-rock gets. Broken Social Scene were billed as a supergroup of bands you just didn’t know you loved yet, and many of its offshoots - the dream-pop melodrama experts in Stars, the flashy New Wave bruisers in Metric - now have deep discographies and obsessive fans all their own. You Forgot It in People is a delightful time capsule for an era when an ecstatic Pitchfork review could seemingly catapult an artist to modest stardom single-handedly - a preview of the Arcade Fire–style feeding frenzies soon to come. You can never be too old for that sort of thing, and never too young, either. “You said survive.” It is the sound of growing old and doing some shit. “You said we’re halfway home,” goes the first monster chorus on Hug of Thunder. But Broken Social Scene have that effect on people: a paralyzing nostalgia for 30 seconds ago, a cautious but infectious optimism about what’s coming 10 years from now. It drives you crazy, listening to extremely young people agonize about the aging process. Bonus fun fact: Lorde was 16 years old when it came out. But the real action’s in the chorus, which is as startled and lackadaisical as the rest of the song, but stumbles across something approaching wizened grace:Įleven years later, on “Ribs,” a gorgeously morose deep cut from her debut album, Pure Heroine, Lorde paid tribute to some crucial makeout music from her, uh, youth, beginning thus:įun fact: “Ribs” is the best song on Pure Heroine. ![]() If that ain’t explicit enough for you, the second verse adds the line, “Swallowing words while giving head.” Maybe stage-cough real loud during that part, if you’re listening to this with your mother. From the onset, singer and nominal frontman Kevin Drew had a talent for making the vague sound devastatingly specific, the prurient sound profound: “Lover’s Spit” was You Forgot It in People’s apex, a woozy and pornographic piano jam about the sobering allure of young, drunken lust. But go back to the old stuff first, if only to connect with their younger selves, and maybe your younger self while you’re at it. It’s lovely, and rousing, and extremely well named. They have a new album, Hug of Thunder, out Friday - their first in seven years. They’d be one of those winningly pompous “more onstage guitarists than crowd members” propositions, were it not for their 2002 breakthrough album You Forgot It in People, which did wonders for their average crowd size. Broken Social Scene are a Toronto-based collective comprising anywhere from six to 600 people. Still, better to have too much than not enough.Very pretty. Occasionally the record can lose focus, without a standalone frontman/woman – and while that doesn’t make Hug Of Thunder bad, it can feel disjointed, like listening to a decade-spanning compilation, moving through genres and line-ups with discombobulating results. Single Halfway Home could be the “textbook” BSS sound, building to crescendo after crescendo (see also: Arcade Fire), but everywhere the feeling pervades of a genuine community spirit, an all hands on deck, kitchen sink approach. The title track is a more electronic, stuttering take on both her solo work and her previous efforts with BSS, but Gonna Get Better takes the mood further with a bleak (if realist) worldview (ie: couldn’t get worse). One welcome return is Leslie Feist, who brings more to the songs she fronts here than the other singers manage. Theirs is a maximalist approach, Americana stretched into the stadium, widescreen and sun-bleached. The fifth Broken Social Scene album comes after a seven-year wait, but this ragbag group of musicians – 15 at the latest count and corralled by Kevin Drew – have retained their all-encompassing sound, with the bells, whistles (and horns) of previous releases present and correct.
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