That resident sirens Emily Haines, Feist and Amy Millan share the billing on 'Sentimental X's' speaks to their more limited involvement in Broken Social Scene as they tend to their own bands and careers, and the repeated lyrics about 'a friend you used to call' underscores the sense of relationships drifting apart.

But primarily, the mood is one of acceptance and moving on - and, by extension, of coming to terms with the differences between the Broken Social Scenes of 20. As the title nottoo-subtly indicates, Forgiveness Rock Record is about making amends for past mistakes, and songs like 'World Sick' (set amid 'a minefield of wounded affection') and the urgent rocker 'Forced to Love' carry traces of the self-titled album's interpersonal anxieties. For a band that once sang 'it's all gonna break' like it was a self-fulfilling prophecy, Broken Social Scene has never sounded more together.įorgiveness Rock Record thus marks a clean break from the narrative that began with 2001's modest Feel Good Lost, accelerated rapidly with the international breakthrough of 2002's You Forgot It In People and then was nearly derailed with 2005's tumultuous self-titled release, recorded at a time when the band was flush with sudden success, but struggling to find the right tour-life/home-life balance. For others, Broken Social Scene is defined by trippy, triple-guitar jams that slowly erupt into moments of brass-blasted rapture - but while that observation may be supported by Forgiveness Rock Record's epic opener 'World Sick,' it doesn't explain the manic, string-stabbed berserker pop of 'Chase Scene,' or the breezy, space-age-bachelorpad swing of 'Art House Director.' And then there are those who say the Broken Social Scene sound is the result of producer Dave Newfeld's psychedelic studio magic however, for Forgiveness Rock Record, the band decamped to Soma Studios in Chicago and Giant Studio in Toronto to work with one of their heroes, Tortoise/Sea and Cake drummer John McEntire, who punched holes in the textural haze and coaxed the band into delivering their most assertive, forthright performances to date. So even now - some 10 years after Drew and Canning first started laying down ambient instrumentals in a Toronto basement for their debut BSS release Feel Good Lost - that eternal question still lingers: what exactly makes a Broken Social Scene album a Broken Social Scene album?įor some, it's that omnipresent element of randomness and chaos - which is a fine theory and all, except Forgiveness Rock Record was approached on arguably the most stable footing the band has ever had, built as it was around the core 2007-08 touring line-up of Drew, Canning, drummer Justin Peroff and guitarists Andrew Whiteman, Charles Spearin and Sam Goldberg. In hindsight, Broken Social Scene's period of supposed inactivity was arguably their most productive stretch yet - yet another contradiction that makes up the byzantine BSS myth. In the time thats elapsed since the release of 2005's self-titled opus, we were more than tided over by the 2007 release of founding member Kevin Drew's solo album, Spirit If, followed a few months later by co-founder Brendan Canning's own solo set, Something for All of US - both of which were released under the 'Broken Social Scene Presents' banner, both of which were supported by tours that featured careerspanning setlists, and both of which featured pretty much the same group of players you hear on this new BSS release, Forgiveness Rock Record. So yeah, it's been five years since the last Broken Social Scene album, but it also hasn't.

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