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Broken Social Scene
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Broken Social Scene tries to be an extremely organized indie-rock jam session -- something that a few, but hardly all, of the tracks on You Forgot ... tried. In some ways, its spiritual cousin is Sufjan Stevens' Illinois, another continuous album portraying an extremely complex picture that resolves itself as joyous. Unlike Stevens, however, Broken Social Scene decidedly remains a rock group, working in a much narrower vein; the emotion backing each song here is inevitably upbeat yet lined with sadness -- certainly Stevens would not end an album with the joyous exultation that "It's All Gonna Break". The group has lost some of the accessibility of You Forgot it in People, which wore its heart on its sleeve with fewer emotional contradictions, but has maintained the same emotional neediness at the previous album's heart. And to refer to any album that maintains a band's theme while both distilling and complicating its sound as less than a success is an error.
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Broken Social Scene is a Canadian alliance loosely led by Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning; its members, now about a dozen, are ... active in other Montreal bands. The sound of 21st-century Montreal is coalescing as upbeat anthems overstuffed with instruments and eccentricities. That style was as much a part of the band's beloved 2002 album, "You Forgot It in People," as of the Arcade Fire's more immediately celebrated 2004 album, "Funeral."
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The Toronto-based legion Broken Social Scene has no idea when to say when. They encompass roughly 15 members these days, many of whom overlap with other Canadian indie bands too large to easily fit onstage, and their third album is so densely layered with instruments that its lyrics are crushed into an incomprehensible blur. By the time they get to the climax of the closing 10-minute explosion “It’s All Gonna Break,” they’ve airlifted in the string section, the horn brigade and the “Bolero” rhythm. But their excess comes off as generosity—the album’s plush and detailed enough to invite extensive exploration, and varied enough to not get exhausting. Neatest surprise: the Princely groove of “Hotel,” with at least three singers contributing muffled whispers whose erotic charge is clear even if their content isn’t.
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Amidst a flood of bands sporting a collective, all-for-one sound, Broken Social Scene has prevailed with its own definitive aesthetic, one that doesn't shy away from the gaggle-effect but does its best to avoid superfluous binging. Though a little more fat-trimming and cohesive focus would have served this collection well, thegroup's third full-length develops its sound while including every available neighbor who has a triangle or voice to lend to the music - and to the index-like album credits.
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Even moreso than on their first disc, Broken Social Scene seems to have drawn in the cream of the crop of Canadian musicians. Artists from The Dears, Metric, Do Make Say Think and other bands all show up, as well as singer Leslie Feist, who has gained a good bit of publicity for herself with her last release Let It Die. The album eases into things with "Our Faces Split The Coast In Half" with Feist adding vocals to a breezy little track tha almost could have been on her own album, while they lower the boom on the second track "Ibi Dreams Of Pavement (A Better Day)." Channeling the group mentioned in the title, the track is a complete guitar fuzz stompbox fest with overdriven vocals that concludes with a noisy, beautiful coda powered by blistering horns.
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In Canada, Broken Social Scene is somewhat of a phenomenon. Since wooing fans and critics alike with their 2003 Juno Award-winning album You Forgot It in People, the band's peculiar popularity has made them stars. The community that surrounds the 15-member-plus band is a family-like atmosphere with its many Canadian artists and musicians. When listening to Broken Social Scene, you ... get the individual sounds of Feist, Stars, Memphis, Metric, and Apostle of Hustle, among others. It's camaraderie and education combined. The lush dynamic that carries Broken Social Scene's self-titled third effort is definitely built upon that.
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Broken Social Scene