Broken Social Scene Album: "Broken Social Scene" Release Date: Oct 4, 2005 Label: Arts & Crafts Rock-Rev Value: [8.0/10] Genre: Rock Styles: Indie Rock, Post-Rock, Experimental Buy It

Tracklist:

1. Our Faces Split the Coast in Half
2. Ibi Dreams of Pavement (A Better Day)
3. 7/4 (Shoreline)
4. Finish Your Collapse and Stay for Breakfast
5. Major Label Debut
6. Fire Eye'd Boy
7. Windsurfing Nation
8. Swimmers
9. Hotel
10. Handjobs for the Holidays
11. Superconnected
12. Bandwitch
13. Tremoloa Debut
14. It's All Gonna Break

Band Offical Site

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review by:Allmusic
reviewer: MacKenzie Wilson
Allmusic Album Value: (4.5/5)

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 also 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. The 14-song set is as bright and moving as the band's previous efforts, but Broken Social Scene holds more charisma, more depth, and surely more complexities. The mix isn't messy in conventional terms. It's artistically untidy without production boundaries. Album opener "Our Faces Split the Coast in Half," which features the Dears' Murray Lightburn, makes a grand entrance with its polished horn arrangements, tight guitar riffs, and hypnotic harmonies. Additional standouts include indie rock moments such as "7/4 (Shoreline)" and the nervy "Fire Eye'd Boy." Handclaps and crowd chatter dosie-do with a sharp rock aesthetic on "Windsurfing Nation," which was the original title. Here, Toronto rapper K-Os and Feist vocally find their way through this majestic cinematic backdrop for one of its finest songs. From here, Broken Social Scene is a simply a rush of mini epics: "Handjobs for the Holidays," "Superconnected," and album closer "It's All Gonna Break" (this could have been a Nada Surf song) showcase how smart, creative, and brilliant this band truly is. Broken Social Scene are more than a collective; they're an orchestra for both the slacker generation and the literati.

Original Link

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review by:Pitchfork
reviewer: Brian Howe, September 9, 2005
Album Value: (8.4/10)

Expectations are a bitch. Ask J.D. Salinger. Or George Lucas. Or Kevin Shields. After Broken Social Scene stumbled out of the incestuous Toronto alt-rock scene with Feel Good Lost-- a postrumental refrigerator-hum stiff of a debut-- few would have guessed this group of scruffed-up bohos had a veritable classic lurking in their collective consciousness. Then, ignited by a rabid internet reception, You Forgot It in People gracefully went boom, and lots of people remembered why they loved indie rock-- the shambling ecstasy, the pitch-perfect experimentation, the unabashed heart-on-sleeveness of it all.

Now, with file-sharers queuing up like mad and pre-orders bumping them to Amazon Top 50 status, the collective reacts to the furor by expanding and magnifying; another six members join the brood for its self-titled third full-length, and the band's once-refined studio sound is blown up into a pixilated blur of blood-gush guitars and squall-of-sound production that's somehow meticulously unhinged. This exercise in excess makes the ambitious You Forgot It in People seem positively understated by comparison.

De facto band leader Kevin Drew recently told Pitchfork that Broken Social Scene producer (and NYPD punching bag) David Newfeld "got addicted to the idea of trying to top YFIIP." He added: "His massage therapist says he might die in 10 years unless he changes his lifestyle." It's Newfeld's risky mixing and uncanny knack for coalescing myriad instruments and voices into a propulsive whole that defines this new album. Whereas You Forgot It in People was exacting and refined-- each cymbal crash snipped to perfection, each underlying string melody was spare and to-the-point-- Broken Social Scene is wily and flowing. Just consider each disc's mood-setting introduction: YFIIP's "Capture the Flag" is muted and tasteful; BSS's "Our Faces Split the Coast in Half" gets out of bed, trips, falls down, does a sloppy summersault, and gets back up no worse for the wear. The contrasting titles alone-- one direct, one Dali-esque-- speak volumes. But, however symbolic, "Faces" is only a casual stretch, with follower "Ibi Dreams of Pavement (A Better Half)" serving as the album's first true workout.

"Ibi" breaks in with a woozy, five-alarm guitar-- a warning call for the track's off-key surrealism and pile-on distortion. Like the shaky ascent of a homemade rocketship, the song constantly teeters on cataclysmic oblivion; shards of chords slip away and grind against each other as the track embarks. Buried between the static and the void, mumbled vocals are folded in before the brass enters and elevates the endeavor to fist-pumping, room-on-fire glory.(...)

Full Review

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review by: Stylus
reviewer: Derek Miller, 2005-10-05
Album Value: (B+)

Broken Social Scene has a talent for threshing silk grist out of miscellany. They can start with a beat, let it gallop in an empty room for fifteen seconds, heap multiple guitar parts on it, join it to one of their many vocalists, hell maybe several moaning out in a shared instant, and pin you to the wall with their beautiful chaos. At times it all seems like a mis-start that the band was too tired to halt full-borne, and there’s a sensitive poesie to the inertia they build out of these false steps.

After the abortive post-rock of Feel Good Lost, 2002/2003’s breakout critical success, You Forgot it In People, channeled the toss-offs and the heated grind of their ascendant pop into an album’s worth of dirt-jean symphonies. Truly a record lover’s record, it was hard to tease any of the songs apart from their neighbors, as though just the effort would melt the entire ensemble into its myriad studio parts, a mislaid guitar line again sounding foul and out of place and two off-kilt beats clanging racket and distortion. Oh, and a trumpet with no bridge to cross.

With Broken Social Scene, this massive Canadian collective, summoned around principal duo Brendan Canning and Kevin Drew, again manages to coalesce their many voices and pasts into a fluid cantata. Rough and furious, a sublime cough into the wind, they create a crude din without patience for getting things perfect. This is orchestral pop given the sand-grind, its shine and texture removed to leave a smear on something that was once natural. Take “Windsurfing Nation,” the track that lent its name to this record for many of its first incarnations. After starting as an experimental sound collage, a stumbling beat and wheezing vocals atop tangled guitar parts, the song wiggles into a prom-worthy fist-pumper. Unknown numbers of guitars spike and jingle around each other as something starts to spark, and before you know it, there’s a chorus and an upward pull. And then, what do you know, there goes K-Os, that backpackin’ slug, with a few verses to throw into the mix. It sounds like a post-millenial genre-fuck gone formula. Christ knows it shouldn’t work. But it does. I guess you knew I would say that..(...)

Full Review

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review by: Pop Matters
reviewer: Zeth Lundy
Album Value: (5/10)

The appeal of Broken Social Scene's 2002 breakthrough album You Forgot It in People was largely contingent on its being blessed with a stinging sensation of spontaneity. The record seemed to creatively unfold as it played: taut grooves sprouted from preoccupied noodling, driving crescendos were harnessed and abused, studio chatter interfered at random moments. The Canadian indie collective stumbled upon a cohesive fluke of sorts, a record built by likeminded musicians mining for that elusive sound of something new. Who cared if the record didn't actually have any songs, in the formal sense -- it was inspired, and that infectiousness made the lack of real compositions irrelevant.

The band's third record, the titularly challenged Broken Social Scene, sounds like it's trying to recapture that spontaneity in swollen, epic gestures. But synchronicity and charm cannot be manufactured, and so the effort feels unnatural, as if the band is attempting to force an unpredictable good thing into a predictable pattern for success. Either that, or there's just too many cooks in Broken Social Scene's kitchen. (The group's double-digit roster, which includes members of Stars, Apostle of Hustle, and Metric, is appended this time by appearances from K-Os and the Dears' Murray Lightburn.) Broken Social Scene is a gratuitous collection of repetitive pocket-symphony anthems for the indie set and an unsuccessful regurgitation of You Forgot It in People's rareness.

In its ambitious reach, the collective's weaknesses shine through. The songs rarely make sense beyond their own circle-jerking, lacking any sense of definable structure or purpose except to reach a head-expanding plateau of catharsis and beat it into submission. When this long record (this very long, 60-plus-minute record) reaches its midpoint, déjà vu sets in, and for good reason: Broken Social Scene's songs are merely two- or four-chord vamps that, without choruses or verses or bridges, lack an identity outside of the big picture and can't help but incite comparisons with each other. If there are so many strong talents in the Broken Social Scene family, then why do they create nothing but a prosaic commotion as a creative unit? (Lyrics are an especially rocky area for the band; apparently 15 people couldn't come up with anything more profound than hooks like "If you always get up late / You're never gonna be on time / And that's a shame / 'Cause I like you.") Broken Social Scene may relish in the possibilities of its experimental pop, but the band's fixation on You Forgot It in People's blueprint mutates into nothing but single-riffed simulation. On the very basic level of a listening experience, "Ibi Dreams of Pavement (A Better Day)" is a more explosive version of "KC Accidental", "7/4 (Shoreline)" is a faster, groovier version of "Cause = Time" with a fiery vocal from Feist, and, despite its provocative title, "Handjobs for the Holidays" clicks along as a more densely multi-tracked version of "Stars and Sons".(...)

Full Review

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review by: Conctact Music
reviewer: Peter Landwehr
Album Value: (4.1/5)

The watchword for Broken Social Scene on You Forgot It in People was "variety". The band's sophomore album was a blend of styles ranging from folk to post-rock that evoked a strange combination of childlike joy and depressive melancholy, and managed to win the Canadian band a Juno Prize and a large underground following. Identifying leaders of a 17-member collective (whose participants cross-pollinate with other bands) is hard. Nonetheless, the delay in the arrival of the group's self-titled third release can be at least partly laid at the feet of producer David Newfeld, who set out to surpass his impressive work on You Forgot and has refused to release Broken Social Scene until satisfied. Whether he and the group have managed that is debatable, but Broken Social Scene is certainly an equal, albeit more difficult, successor to the band's last work.

For Broken, the band has created a sound that is still instantly identifiable as Broken Social Scene but is more coherent than that of You Forgot; it retains that album's sense of being many singles that work well as a unified group, but each track on Broken has a similar texture and energy. Newfeld's role in this process has been to pull specific instrumental and vocal lines out of this chaos for optimum effect. While very disorganized on first listen, after several spins the cleanliness behind Broken's noise becomes clear.(...)

Full Review

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review by: Tinymixtapes
reviewer: Jspicer
Album Value: (4/5)
This may be one of the most difficult reviews of the year. It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. Half the reviews you read are going to praise the Canadian collective's third proper, self-titled album as another masterpiece; the other half are going to trash it, citing the band stretching themselves too thin, that too much is happening in the midst of the album's 14 tracks to catch all of it, even after repeated listens. Of course, I'm going to be difficult and be the margin of error -- that damned 1% that throws the curve out of balance and leaves pollsters scratching their heads. Why are these people still straddling the fence?

All the above comments I've made about Broken Social Scene's latest effort are true: It is a masterpiece, if you measure masterpieces by reputation and assumption. The band's stretching themselves a little thin, if you measure thin as sleeker production, more lush sounds, and overextended musical interludes. But I pose this question: Isn't this what Broken Social Scene has been hanging their hat on since they burst onto the American music landscape late in 2002? This is a band that makes the same noise whether 6, 7, or 15 people are gracing a stage or a studio booth. They're just carrying on their tradition, and doing so with tight craftsmanship even Bob Villa would be proud to sponsor.

But none of this even remotely describes Broken Social Scene.

This is a classic example of the adage 'the more things change, the more they stay the same.' This self-titled gem mirrors the highs and lows of You Forgot it in People almost to a tee. The opener, "Our Faces Split the Coast in Half," is an instrumentally-driven ditty; and while some faint vocals waft in and out of the track, it's the same up and at them spirit of "Capture the Flag," bottled in a jar and slowly unleashed to an ever-growing crowd of rabid indie kids hungry for something bigger, louder, and in your face. The album's first single "7/4 (Shoreline)" mimics the heartbeat of its cousin "Stars and Sons," before exploding into a fury of horns, walls of guitar, and an impassioned choral plea. "Major Label Debut" recycles the dreamy atmosphere of "Looks Just Like the Sun," with quiet aggressions.(...)

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