Pareles Broken Social Scene review

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

Broken Social Scene
"Broken Social Scene"
(Arts & Crafts)
There's a thick haze - part experimentation, part pretension, part perversity - over the songs on "Broken Social Scene." It's the third album by Broken Social Scene, a Canadian band that doesn't want to make its music too easy.
Broken Social Scene is an alliance loosely led by Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning; its members, now about a dozen, are also 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 Broken Social Scene's beloved 2002 album, "You Forgot It in People" (Arts & Crafts), as of the Arcade Fire's more immediately celebrated 2004 album, "Funeral."
But "Broken Social Scene" refuses to ride on Montreal's momentum. The production is defiantly cluttered, with multiple drum tracks, stray horn sections, instruments run backward and voices and effects arriving out of nowhere. Lead vocals are buried in the mix, and many lyrics are slurred and swallowed.
The album looks back fondly to Pavement, which made its substantial guitar hooks and melodies sound rickety and distracted. One song is titled "Ibi Dreams of Pavement (A Better Day)." Broken Social Scene doesn't tamp down its Montreal exuberance; guitar lines leap out of songs like "7/4 (Shoreline)," "Fire Eye'd Boy" and "Superconnected," and so do refrains like "Give 'em all the slip," and "I really don't want to think about those things anymore." The murk clears for the album's finale, "It's All Gonna Break," but that song carries the album's least broadcastable lyrics.

It's easy to sympathize with a band that doesn't want to sell out. But Broken Social Scene confuses integrity with indulgence, burying good songs under way too much studio tomfoolery. JON PARELES

Montreal?!?

― blawa (blawa), Monday, 10 October 2005 20:05 (twenty years ago)

"too easy"

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 10 October 2005 20:11 (twenty years ago)

Battle of the bands: Broken Arcade Parade vs. Black Wolf Radio, GO!

― two states, Monday, 10 October 2005 21:32 (twenty years ago)

I agree with this review.

― jaymc (jaymc), Monday, 10 October 2005 21:34 (twenty years ago)

Aren't they from Toronto.

― polyphonic (polyphonic), Monday, 10 October 2005 21:35 (twenty years ago)

I agree with everything in the review that has nothing to do with where the band is from.

― jaymc (jaymc), Monday, 10 October 2005 21:36 (twenty years ago)

jesus christ, they mention montreal like 10 times!! what an embarrassing mistake. how did they get that wrong? how did fact-checkers not catch it??

"montreal exuberance"?!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Monday, 10 October 2005 21:55 (twenty years ago)

i wish they would pack up their beards and move to montreal. only montreal doesn't deserve to be saddled with them. they are the worst.

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Monday, 10 October 2005 23:57 (twenty years ago)

hey s1ocki! are you going to MEG Montreal? i am thinking about going!

― geeta (geeta), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 00:05 (twenty years ago)

I agree with everything in the review that has nothing to do with where the band is from

I agree, but hesitantly. The "more is more" approach bogs down the record about halfway through, and as a result, the second half is one hell of a slog. However, he uses the word "Montreal" as an adjective more than a simple place name. "Montreal bands", "Montreal exuberance", "21st Century Montreal" are all supposed to denote a sound and a style of music. Basically every point he makes relies on this sort of labelling, and of course it's all bullshit because they don't sound anything like a Montreal band.

Gotta love Pareles' pan-Canadian ignorance, "hey, Arcade Fire are another Canadian band, so I'd better make sure I mention them in my review".

― MindInRewind (Barry Bruner), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 00:15 (twenty years ago)

I like the album but very much agreed when he wrote, "But Broken Social Scene confuses integrity with indulgence."

― Glenn, Tuesday, 11 October 2005 00:25 (twenty years ago)

You know, they sound Canadian. Like Alanis Morrisette, Rush and Skinny Puppy.

― js (honestengine), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 01:24 (twenty years ago)

You Forgot It In Toronto

― Banana Nutrament (ghostface), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 01:37 (twenty years ago)

they are indeed the worst...almost something evil there. the review is interesting but i think he needs to cut to the chase and just say they're a band that probably hates music.

― Susan Douglas (Susan Douglas), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 01:39 (twenty years ago)

Haha I did this earlier this year with a review of a Mexican band (said Monterrey instead of Mexico City)...only ever got one complaint though as far as I know.

― Haikunym (Haikunym), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 01:41 (twenty years ago)

geeta: most likely!! yeah almost for sure i'll be there. last year though the line-up was amazing but the shows i saw were big let-downs.

wait are you coming all the way from berlin??

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 01:43 (twenty years ago)

This review sorta reminds me of the Neutral Milk Hotel show at the Horseshoe in Toronto in '98. I showed up at 11pm, and there was not a single instrument or piece of gear set up on stage. It was showtime, and the band hadn't even loaded in yet. Turns out they were driving in from Montreal... and took their sweet time leaving the city because they thought that Toronto was like 20 minutes away from Montreal (it's more like 5 hours).

― stuber, Tuesday, 11 October 2005 03:06 (twenty years ago)

they are indeed the worst...almost something evil there. the review is interesting but i think he needs to cut to the chase and just say they're a band that probably hates music.

Wha?

I like quite a bit of You Forgot It in People -- the main problem with that album is that it loses steam in its second half. Also, the eclecticism doesn't always work in terms of a whole-album listening experience. Broken Social Scene is a more focused album, stylistically, but it's also a complete mess. I feel like half the songs haven't actually been mixed yet. With the exception of "7/4 (Shorelines)" there's nothing as immediate as "Stars and Sons," "Cause = Time," "Anthem for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl," or "Almost Crimes."

― jaymc (jaymc), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 03:42 (twenty years ago)

I like the new one pretty good. I refer perfect BSS to sloppy BSS, but sloppy BSS is still pretty beautiful. 2nd half >> 1st half, too.

YFIIP is my album of the 00s.

― The Good Dr. Bill (The Good Dr. Bill), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 03:56 (twenty years ago)

sorry for the nasty comments, i guess i just don't get them at all.

― Susan Douglas (Susan Douglas), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 04:07 (twenty years ago)

GDB, just when I think I've figured you out, you throw me a total surprise.

― jaymc (jaymc), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 04:11 (twenty years ago)

I suspect that the BSS album due out in early 06 will be the more accessible one, sort of what people thought Amnesiac would be.

I like this album in theory more than practice. It's certainly complex and layered. It's just not very much fun.

― kornrulez6969 (TCBeing), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 04:14 (twenty years ago)

GDB, just when I think I've figured you out, you throw me a total surprise.

Gotta keep you on your toes, I don't want you getting lazy on me.

― The Good Dr. Bill (The Good Dr. Bill), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 04:20 (twenty years ago)

I guess it just depends if you'd rather Broken Social Scene do messy pop songs or a mess that rings (loud) with pop. And I'm in the latter camp.

I love the messiness of this, I love the production, I love that it keeps the ground really really muddy. You Forgot It In People is nice, but I don't exactly have time for individual songs (outside of "Looks Just Like the Sun"), and I find it way more interesting to hear these pop-songs that are drowning in sound.

I've never understood the people who ga-ga'ed for stand-alone moments like "Cause=Time" or "Anthem for a 17 Year Old Girl" -- or that Feist album.

― sean gramophone (Sean M), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 07:37 (twenty years ago)

Wait, I do actually understand why people seem to like the Feist, but I don't find much meat in those prettywispy strutmascara flavours.

― sean gramophone (Sean M), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 07:38 (twenty years ago)

I think Sean nailed it. As a whole the new album flows a lot better than YFIIP.

And bury the vocals, please, I thought the lyrics were the downfall of YFIIP. The more I hear lyrics/vocals used as a backing instrument as oppossed to the focal point of the song the more I like it.

― Nate Skinner (Nathan S), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 19:10 (twenty years ago)

two months pass...

Frankly I loved their self-titled album. I thought despite the crazy amount of instruments that they brought it all together perfectly to make music that you can simply get lost into. Once one part becomes too much it smoothly just moves over to another part. I can't imagine many other bands pulling this off at all.

And since when do the lyrics have to be the main part of a song? Shouldn't they be considered and instrument like everything else? If it were dominant than the other instruments would definetely sound too busy.
And why should they sound like everyone else? Montreal? Montreal montreal? Are they even FROM montreal?

― Lenore Gale, Thursday, 22 December 2005 19:51 (twenty years ago)

THEY INVENTED MONTRALE

― Huk-L (Huk-L), Thursday, 22 December 2005 19:56 (twenty years ago)

the production and studio tomfoolery on this album is exactly why it is great and their other records are boring!

― kyle (akmonday), Thursday, 22 December 2005 20:55 (twenty years ago)

two months pass...

Fuck that review! who the hell does this guy,Jon Pareles think he is??? the airwaves in this world are so saturated with attempts at being in the top 40 and baby steps towards ripping someone else off, that when something worthwhile and creative comes along, jack-asses like this guy, shoots it down. so sorry that BSS doesn't follow verse,chorus,verse so that your little radio-filled brain dare veer off into imagination and musicianship. oh, woops, you're probably not a muscian @ all...just some big-headed "know-it-all" that fire mouths his feeble minded perspectives upon herds of follow the leaders.

blah.

music survives all.
vibration collects brainwaves and matter is made up of strums,strikes and mutters.

― E.Garant of Van Owens Family, Thursday, 9 March 2006 18:42 (twenty years ago)

that response was well timed.

― harshaw (jube), Thursday, 9 March 2006 19:46 (twenty years ago)

three weeks pass...

I saw and attempted to listen to Broken Social Scene on the Junos show and was totally aghast at how bad and out of tune they were. It makes me fearful of the future of the Canadian music scene if such a rag-tag bunch of no-talent children can be nominated and win a Juno.

I guess all you need to get nominated and win one is to have a tin ear and no visable or performing talent whatsoever! SAD.

Howie

― Howard Prince, Tuesday, 4 April 2006 13:02 (twenty years ago)

visable

― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Tuesday, 4 April 2006 13:06 (twenty years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.