More than two decades after Broken Social Scene founders Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning started making music together in a Toronto basement, eventually mutating their two-man project into an unwieldy, ever-shifting, indie-rock collective, the band is still intact.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kind of.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think parts of us are broken now,\u201d de facto frontman Drew said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I think parts of our relationship are broken, but not the parts that would stop us from continuing.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Canadian band\u2019s sixth studio album, Remember the Humans, arrives today, more than a quarter-century after Broken Social Scene’s debut, Feel Good Lost \u2014 a period marked by rotating lineups, long gaps between releases and a career that\u2019s left a wide imprint on indie rock, even as the years begin to show.<\/p>\n
\u201cBrendan and I were two different people in that basement \u2014 with the same spirit and the same musical motivation \u2014 but that was 26 years ago,\u201d Drew said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou gain a lot, and you lose a lot as you continue in life.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the kitchen table in Canning\u2019s West End Toronto home, the band\u2019s history hangs in the air with equal parts affection, fatigue and muscle memory.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re not a gang anymore, but when you\u2019re back, you\u2019re still that gang, whether you like it or not,\u201d Canning said, drawing a knowing laugh from Drew.<\/p>\n
WATCH | The official video for Only the Good I Keep:<\/p>\n
At times boasting more than 20 members, Broken Social Scene is sometimes described as indie rock\u2019s Wu-Tang Clan, its sprawling, fluid cast functioning like a shared creative hive \u2014 one that helped spin off acts like Stars, Metric and Feist, who\u2019ve all built global followings. Over time, as their individual careers expanded outward, the swarm became harder to draw back in.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were never too far off a breakup,\u201d said Drew, noting people around the band assumed its egos and logistics would eventually implode.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been nine years since the band’s last album, 2017\u2019s Hug of Thunder, and Remember the Humans began, said Drew, out of a simple desire to keep going.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re at a point where our identities aren’t so wrapped up in our work anymore,” he said. “We just want to keep working, we want to be a band and we want to create honest and truthful music.\u201d<\/p>\n
Emerging from the pandemic, the collective set up a studio in Warkworth, Ont., and slipped back into old rhythms \u2014 albeit with more need for personal space.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy day three, it\u2019s like, \u2018Oh my God, what have I done?’ And you can see he wants everyone together,\u201d Canning said, gesturing to Drew, who let out a cackle.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it\u2019s like, \u2018OK, I don’t want that much of you.\u2019 But it’s too late \u2014 you\u2019ve got everyone. And then, the next thing you know, you go on this … three-year journey.\u201d<\/p>\n
Feist returns, but Emily Haines and Amy Millan’s song left off <\/p>\n
The band will hit the road this summer with Metric and Stars \u2014 the first time the three acts have shared a bill in 25 years.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIf everybody keeps their emotional maturity intact, it’s going to be a love fest,\u201d said Drew.<\/p>\n
He added that Metric\u2019s Emily Haines and Stars\u2019 Amy Millan even recorded a track for the new album, but it didn\u2019t make the final cut: \u201cIt just didn\u2019t fit in with all the other wonderful songs we had.\u201d<\/p>\n
A searching, unresolved Leslie Feist, however, anchors the soft-focus melancholy of What Happens Now.<\/p>\n
WATCH | The official audio for What Happens Now:<\/p>\n
“I feel very grateful she reached out and said, \u2018Let’s keep this friendship train going,'” said Drew.<\/p>\n
Still, as Drew and Canning compare notes on prescriptions and various aches, the ride feels different now.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe amount of tequila that’s gonna get drunk on this tour is way less than what it used to be,\u201d said Canning. \u201cI can’t bounce back from booze like the good old days, when Kevin would lay down the credit card after our Henry Fonda Theatre gig in L.A. and we\u2019d take over an entire bar.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAs you get older, and you lose friends and you lose family,\u201d added Drew, \u201cyou hold on to those memories more than you could ever have expected.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018We’re a QR code as a species now’ <\/p>\n
The new record reunites Broken Social Scene with producer David Newfeld, who shepherded the band’s 2002 breakthrough You Forgot It in People and its self-titled 2005 followup. Both Newfeld and Drew had recently lost their mothers, bringing a shared sense of grief into the sessions.<\/p>\n
The familiar heart-swelling, tangled, communal chaos is there \u2014 in the brass-soaked crescendo of Paying For Your Love or the campfire glow of Only the Good I Keep, led by Vancouver\u2019s Hannah Georgas.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But a deeper sense of absence runs through the LP. The slow-building ache of opener Not Around Anymore hears Drew lament a world where \u201cit\u2019s all gone away.\u201d<\/p>\n
WATCH | The official video for Not Around Anymore:<\/p>\n
That feeling extends beyond personal sorrow.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201c[It\u2019s about] the loss of ourselves, really,\u201d said Drew.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cUs, as a connection, as a community. We’ve let it all go. We’re a QR code as a species now.\u201d<\/p>\n
He\u2019s also mourning a city that no longer resembles the Toronto the band came up in.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven in this neighbourhood of Brendan’s, how much it\u2019s drastically changed into the idea of skyscrapers and condos and the things people can’t even really afford,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe priced out our hearts and our families for what? And we live in a time where the word \u2018influencer\u2019 is a cancer to art.\u201d<\/p>\n
But ever the idealist, Drew believes a turnaround is coming \u2014 something rooted not in platforms, but in people.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m so grateful to be in a band with a group of people, because it’s not about one individual. It’s about a group of friends who are still here and alive, trying to remind people about friendship,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cFriendship is one of the greatest protests we have right now.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than two decades after Broken Social Scene founders Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning started making music together…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":656476,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341],"class_list":["post-656475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=656475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656475\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/656476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=656475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=656475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=656475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}