Rather than thinking of Broken Social Scene, the indie rock collective currently made up of 11 active members, as a band, you can think of them as a weather system, appearing as a storm of nowhere that never wants to rushe creation. The last time we heard from them was nine years ago with Hug of Thunder, no doubt because of a bunch of other solo projects like Sam Jr. and Do Make Say Think have come back or started to find their footing. So whenever we get a new Broken Social Scene album, it’s a little treat. Besides founders Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning, it’s hard to keep up with exactly who is still in the band, but many of the old collaborators have come to the party.
Producer David Newfeld— the same man who shaped You Forgot It in People, and their 2005 self-titled record brings that same gift for making chaos feel inevitable back behind the board, and his fingerprints are all over this new album, Remember The Humans. Horns bleed into guitars, voices pile on top of each other, and somehow a melody always floats to the surface just when you think you might drown in the noise. “The Briefest Kiss” has a triphop sort of post punk vibe, ala Portishead, with Airel Engle (La Force, ALL HANDS_MAKE LIGHT) and then shifts into an RnB flavour. It shouldn’t work, but it does.
“Relief,” the fifth track, is where the album pulls its most surprising trick. The synths sharpen, the rhythm locks into something crisper and more propulsive, and for a moment you’d swear you’d wandered into a Metric record. It’s a genuinely uncanny resemblance—that same cool, chest-forward urgency that Emily Haines does so well, but instead we have Lisa Lobsinger of Reverie Song Revue. It’s a great little moment of pure exhilaration, recreated on “Hey Amanda” which is very The National.
Most of Remember The Humans requires a few listens to really get lost in it, as it might be the collective’s most subtle album yet, but it’s still a pretty batch of songs.
