BeatRoute Magazine Alberta print e-edition - July 2017

musicreviews
Broken Social Scene
Hug of Thunder
Arts & Crafts
Broken Social Scene is perhaps the most striking
exemplar of the notion that there are only two
categories of music, live, and recorded. Not that the
elaborate rock and roll soundscape of a track like
“Halfway Home” couldn’t be replicated on a big stage
with enough Fender Jaguars and Micro Korgs, but
rather that a collection of musicians with this level of
individual success are rarely seen at award shows, let
alone in the same band.
In its inception, Broken Social Scene was a microcosm
of the Toronto indie rock scene. The band
began through the slow merging of two bands, Kevin
Drew and Charles Spearin’s KC Accidental (which
became the title of one of Broken Social Scene’s
best known songs), and Kevin Drew and Brendan
Canning’s Broken Social Scene. Both bands were decidedly
post-rock, with paced moments of lowercase
in between slow guitar jams, glitch synth drones,
and sound effects. An early KC Accidental track even
features audio of Charles Spearin flipping through his
voicemail, a strong contrast to the indie rock anthems
of the Broken Social Scene of Hug of Thunder. But
even in these early releases, soon-to-be-huge names
started popping up in the liner notes.
The mostly instrumental and reserved Feel Good
Lost (2001) was the first full-length release with the
BSS name, but the indie rock supergroup we see
today truly emerged with You Forgot it in People
(2002). It’s a truly frenetic piece of work, with perfectly
strange song titles (“Late Nineties Bedroom Rock
for the Missionaries”), slippery post-rock grooves
(“Pacific Theme”), and moments of incendiary
rhythm (“Almost Crimes”). Vocals are hardly the
centre of the devoutly art-rock record, but alongside
the streamlining of the band into a rock format,
frontman Kevin Drew could be heard on most of the
tracks. What were formerly backing singers became
features, and thus the interplay between Drew and
vocal leads from Amy Milan, Emily Haines, and Leslie
Feist started to define the band. This also marked the
creation of Arts & Crafts which go on to become an
indie powerhouse.
Between You Forgot it in People (2002) and Broken
Social Scene (2005) a lot would happen paratextually
with the band members. Amy Milan and Evan
Cranley’s Stars would release the career-defining Set
Yourself on Fire (2004), Emily Haines and James Shaw
would record three records as Metric and release two
of them on Last Gang records, and Feist would begin
to soundtrack every wedding since with the release
of Let It Die (2004), to say nothing of other tangential
bands like Apostle of Hustle and Do Make Say
42 | JULY 2017 • BEATROUTE
Think. These successes would compound from here,
and all the disparate styles of each member began
to seep into their own projects and bands, even into
solo work from Brendan Canning and Kevin Drew as
Broken Social Scene Presents.
By 2010’s Forgiveness Rock Record, the band was
defined by its star-studded cast and its massive and
bombastic indie rock anthems. The live sets became
a guessing game of who was available to tour in front
of a raucous horn section. Seven years later, Hug of
Thunder feels like a musical high school reunion, and
not in the sassy Zac Efron kind of way.
It opens like most Broken Social Scene releases,
with a tempered and drone-like build into an
explosive crescendo. “Halfway Home” is an inviting
reminder of the biggest moments on Forgiveness
Rock. This leads cleanly into the Emily Haines lead
“Protest Song,” which maintains a similar level of
major key note density, with several layers of roaring
guitars played by Andrew Whiteman among others
and synths by players like Lisa Lobsinger. The cavernous
acoustic opening of “Skyline” teases a change of
pace, before drummer Justin Peroff kicks the song
back into the same rhythmic space as the opening
two. The record occasionally slows itself down in
this way, but rarely turns down the volume for long.
That’s not to say that every track is Forgiveness
Rock’s “Meet Me in the Basement,” but it doesn’t
contain that much negative space. Every track arcs
strongly, and contains a truly dense mix, but with
a strong bias towards traditional rock instrumentation;
fewer woodwinds, less present horns. The
vocals are often doubled and offset between left
and right. Thus, the mixes are hazier and less crisp
than on previous releases. The headphone listening
experience benefits strongly from this, although the
clarity of the vocals is less, and thus the impact of
the canted lyricism is mitigated somewhat. A track
like the Feist-centred “Hug of Thunder” stands out
in this regard, especially in conversation with her
new, intensely raw, solo release, Pleasure (2017).
There are a few new faces here too, most notably a
transcendent vocal feature from AroarA’s Ariel Engle
on “Gonna Get Better.”
What was once a compendium of disparate ideas
has solidified into an identity: a respite for weary
songwriters, a chance to play big songs in a big band,
singing in front of a cacophony of expert musicianship,
for audiences that might actually be smaller
than they get from their day job bands. For us, it’s an
extremely large and impressive piece of indie rock
canon, a high water mark for how beautiful and successful
a musical community can become, and how
important it is that it stay together.
• Liam Prost
illustration: Taryn Garrett