Broken Social Scene
Remember the Humans
ARTS & CRAFTS
Perhaps it was just sheer luck that led Broken Social Scene to reunite with their guardian-producer David Newfeld for the first time since 2006’s self-titled LP; but then again, maybe Newfeld and Kevin Drew were pulled together by cosmic attraction. Moving to a new neighborhood, bumping into an old friend, experiencing the shared grief that comes with a loved one passing away—all of these subtle coincidences allowed Drew and Newfeld to bond over their artistic paths and fall in love with building a record together all over again. Bringing in names like Feist, Metric’s Emily Haines, and Lisa Lobsinger that were swiped from the local Canadian indie-rock scene over the years with a vaudeville hook, the amorphous supergroup has returned after nearly a decade away with their most profound, abstracted formation of proto-pop music yet.
With the help of some proximity, the strewn-about members of Broken Social Scene decided to rein in the remnants of the decade that followed 2017’s Hug of Thunder and unearth a brand new yet wholly familiar artful rock sound with a surprising amount of momentum behind it. While you wouldn’t want to bet on when BSS will drop another album, given their frenetic release calendar over the past 20 years, you’ll always want to get your hands on the end product when (or if) it eventually comes out. And even then, the years between releases aid the band in their creative rebuilding, as their silence never feels like absence but rather like a building pressure or gathering mass, which takes years for the right moment to break.
Opening track “Not Around Anymore” tells the story of a breakup comedown that’s crystallized into early rock sensibilities, twisting and turning through reclamation until it nestles into a habitual nostalgia closely connected to BSS’s past discography. The notable groove of “The Call” evokes Yo La Tengo’s lyricism, Radiohead’s breakdowns, and LCD Soundsystem’s engineering, bouncing into an ascending vibration that’s unique in its composition and effective in its thematic contradiction of the wounded yet still desiring culture of isolation. “And I Think of You” gently insists that we check in on one another, as deep brass tones contrast Drew’s languid vocals while he bellows the pull of time into a single droning sense of dislocation.
Outcast by the woes of time and the encompassing digital world, Remember the Humans is a refusal of control in the fractured modern world, where deep, reinvented branches of engagement reach toward their listeners to create a rare, ungoverned testament to the human condition. After a decade of pause, the members of Broken Social Scene have produced a superbloom of an album, and we all should stop and smell the roses.
