Broken Social Scene
Superconected
Given all the means through which one can communicate these days — land lines, cell phones, faxes, email — you’d think reaching one another would be a simple task. Not so it seems, as the actual act of connecting is quickly becoming an elusive art. For Broken Social Scene, a collective comprising some 17 members, making contact poses even more of a challenge. Coordinating that many bandmates isn’t easy, and this fact contributed to an arduous two-year-plus recording process to deliver the follow-up to 2003’s touted You Forgot It In People December (Arts & Crafts). It was worth the wait. BSS’s recently released eponymous album reflects the various talents of its members and sometimes even the tension and chaos that comes with so many cooks in the kitchen — FURNITURE with lovely results.
So when it took 45 minutes to connect with one of its main members, Brendan Canning, it didn’t come as too much of a surprise. “Sorry, I was just kinda dozing upstairs — folding T-shirts, wholesale mlb jerseys and not doing much else,” he says. It’s understandable; he has been multi-tasking myriad responsibilities of late. Calexico Preparing for its North American tour, cheap nfl jerseys Canning has become point person for making it all happen. “This time DVD! around it’s a completely unique circumstance,” he relays. “There was Kevin [Drew, singer/co-songwriter], he wasn’t that keen on doing this tour and I was really keen on doing this tour, so it was sort of my job to find the space.
“We’ve been trying to figure out who’s going to come out on tour, actually learn the record, and trying to be,” he takes a tired, long pause, “it’s a totally new experience for the band right now.”
Broken Social Scene rarely rehearses, says Canning, but now “We’re doing 17 rehearsals for this tour, which is probably more rehearsal than we’ve done in the past three years, just because . . . no one’s really around and we haven’t had any time to sort of revamp the show. So this is going to be the Revamped Broken Social Scene — it’s gonna be a different band than we’ve ever gone out with before.”
Scheduling conflicts not only arise from coordinating so many people, but also because Broken Social Scene members juggle time in other bands. BSS comprises a Who’s Who of Canadian indie rock. In addition to “main” members Drew, Canning, and drummer Justin Peroff, count Stars’ Evan Cranley, Amy Millan, and Torquil Campbell; Feist namesake Leslie Feist; Metric’s Emily Haines and James Shaw; Do Make Say Think’s Ohad Benchetrit and Charles Spearin; Apostle Of Hustle’s Andrew Whiteman; and The Weakerthans’ Jason Tate — maybe even some of the Maple Leafs. On the new album, Toronto rapper k-os makes a guest appearance and “Murray [Lightburn] from The Dears may be on [‘Our Faces Break The Coast In Half’] somewhere,” says Canning.
Quite a scene, indeed. With that much talent, one wonders if egos ever get in the way of the creative process. “Not on a grand scale,” contends Canning. “I think peoples’ feelings get hurt — but that’s only human nature. There’s never been any real big ego standoffs . . . It’s almost always in the name of doing something good.
“I don’t think anyone’s, no one’s been so bold or so bullheaded as to try and champion something that’s solely because it’s got their imprint on it or something like that. You know, it’s almost like the opposite, sometimes — people making way for other people.”
It’s an exhausting amount of talent to type out, let alone work with on a song. With so many artists on board, songs take many shapes before they arrive on album. Some don’t even resemble the initial idea. “Our Faces,” which is also the opening track, “Took a year to sort of put together,” Canning confesses. “You know, initially — I could sit down multilingue: here and play you the idea that you don’t even hear on the actual track itself [he plays a pretty and simple melodic chord progression]. But like everything else on top of it, you don’t hear the piano anymore . . . It was just a small little idea and then someone like Dave [Newfeld, producer] took a hold of it, reversed the piano and the chorus and made it, you know, turned it into a backwards loop, which in turn got Evan Cranley to double that live, so that it becomes a really Burt Bacharach-y horn line.”
The album experienced a metamorphosis along with each individual song. Its infancy began when BSS was recording another record at Benchetrit’s studio, and “We really didn’t know at one point whether this record was gonna work, you know. [So] we started making another one.
“I think we were just getting a little lost,” continues Canning. “We Back had missed a deadline that [we] were hoping — that we intended to make . . . We just hadn’t really imagined it would take so long.” The original release date was aimed for February, then changed to May, and was missed once again. “I think it was just getting a little confusing.” Heading in a new direction, this ultimately became the 14-song eponymous album in its current form, with Newfeld behind the boards. Oh yeah, and it threw in a seven-song EP, To Be You And Me, in with the self-titled record for good measure.
If ego is not part of the BSS equation, personal conflicts did seem to contribute to the lengthy time it took to get the album on the streets. As wholesale nba jerseys Canning intimates, “It wasn’t a lack of focus. Yes, it was hard to get people together, but I just think it’s a very, very intense crew. There was a lot of emotional turbulence running through it for a good year, so uh. For one reason or another — but, you know, I’m not going to be spilling people’s personal lives.”
Enough said. It won’t be the first time intimate relationships fueled such spectacular results on record. Passion creeps under the many layers of tracks encompassing the songs. “Swimmers” has a flirty undertow, as does the lithe, fuzzy, whisper/sung come-on vibe of “Hotel.” “Windsurfing Nation” saunters in with urgent beats, and Feist’s vocals slink in and out in a talk-sung Urges fashion, along with k-os’ and Drew’s. Elsewhere, there’s a playful sensuality in the duet-like delivery of “7/4 Shoreline” — a longtime live favorite. Tension mounts in “Ibi Dreams Of Pavement (A Better Day),” with its indiscernible lyrics and chaotic building wave of sound. There’s a sense of push and pull throughout, and it’s evident in song titles like “Finish Your Collapse And Stay For Breakfast” and the epic closer, “It’s All Gonna Break.”
“A song like ‘It’s All Gonna Break,’ Charles and Kevin basically [used] acoustic guitar and [sang it] like a backyard kind of thing . . . That cheap nba jerseys song has been five-years-old at this point . . . It was originally recorded for . . . You Forgot It In People. There was a head-to-head meeting over — a couple of us didn’t think it was right, a couple of us did think it was right, but eventually those who thought it wasn’t right won out,” says Canning.
Compromise, passion, tension, and chaos giving way to beauty — all connecting together to form a perfect relationship, and one apropos of the Broken Social Scene collective.
— Althea Legaspi
