Broken Social Scene – Broken Social Scene (2005)

Canadian band Broken Social Scene is actually more of an indie rock collective than an actual band. Throughout their existence, they've had 27 members, most of which have their own musical projects. This album alone has 22 musicians on it. Most notable people in the band are Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning, who write the songs and sing the most vocals. Also, it's worth mentioning that Leslie Feist, who has become quite popular with her solo career is on this album. This album was originally meant to be called Windsurfing Nation. The album includes very varied songs but most of them can be categorised as some form of noise pop. There aren't that many catchy melodies and the instruments are muffled together so even appreciating separate instruments is sometimes a bit difficult. The result, however, sounds quite unique and experimental.



When I was in uni, many of my friends liked Broken Social Scene and I thought I should like it too, but I was always a fool for catchy melodies and I had difficulties in really getting excited about this music. Now, more than 10 years later, I can appreciate this music a lot more. There are some excellent experimental sounds and you could even go on to call Broken Social Scene the Sonic Youth of the 00's. Maybe the title Windsurfing Nation was a reference to Daydream Nation. This was still a time when electric guitars were extremely cool and much of the sound on this album is dominated by electric guitars. It's almost like post-rock, but lighter, almost like shoegazing, but stranger and more aggressive.

I think the first time I ever heard Broken Social Scene was when my big sister made me a compilation album with some of her favourite music for a christmas present. That album had the track Superconnected. I really liked that song, but further investigation revealed that that really was the best song on the album in my view. The rest of the album was too weird and difficult to get a hold of. My musical taste has grown much during the last few years and now I can totally see the merits of the band. Then again, the music is a bit outdated by its sounds now.

I'm going to All Points East festival here in London this spring and Broken Social Scene is playing there. I hope it doesn't clash with some other bands I really want to see, because I think this music would work really well live. I'm expecting to see lots of instruments on stage and lots of crazy jams. I haven't listened to the last couple of albums by this band at all, so I don't know if their style has changed dramatically.

The first music video I could find from this album is the music video for 7/4 (Shoreline). This is one of the best songs on the album. It has Feist singing and some excellent indie guitars. The music video is basically just the band playing the song while a cassette recorder records their performance. The song has some great progressive rock elements, changing rhythms and bending melodies.

As I've said before, I didn't necessarily care that much for this album back in the day, but I still decided to buy it when I saw it at a record store with affordable price, because I really thought this band had something special and I would probably learn to like it. That really happened, but it was just later than I had expected.

Listen to the album on Spotify.