Canadian collective salutes messy grooves

Sam Bloch Staff Writer

Your favorite indie rock collective, already equipped with three or four of each of your favorite rock instruments, has made a longer and more expensive album than its widely revered predecessor. But in the process, Broken Social Scene has managed to sound less adventurous than they’d probably like their latest to be. That’s okay, though, because Broken Social Scene, save a couple of tracks, very successfully forgoes You Forgot It In People’s taste for eclecticism and (occasionally) the subdued in favor of a series of messy grooves that pay little mind to traditional verses, choruses, etc., and by the end of each song, volume. Those that don’t are each a minute long.

In many ways, this is still the same old Broken Social Scene. They’re still screaming about being alone (“I got shot right in the neck/you weren’t there, you weren’t there”) and dropping just enough profanity to speak for slackerhood, still making those goofy straightforward chants (“I really don’t want to think about those things any more,” over and over on “Superconnected”) sound great, if only because they’re underneath a ton of guitars. And even if most of the songs are content to spin around a woozy, shoegazing dance loop only hinted at on YFIIP, the album still strictly adheres to the Broken Social Scene aesthetic of, well, throwing anything they can get on top of some hi-hats.

But such a predictably successful formula is hardly as exciting as it is when used sparingly. Fans of the “Cause=Time” guitar wig-out, beware: that perfectly released rock-out coda only happens a couple of times here, and at its best when gracefully accumulating noise through “7/4 (Shoreline).” With the exception of the surefooted “Fillmore Jive” rewrite “Ibi Dreams of Pavement,” there aren’t an abundance of YFIIP’s dissonant pop gems; the urgency of tracks like “Almost Crimes” and the efficient buzz on “Stars and Sons” are missed on some of the more familiarly cluttered tracks on BSS (see the one-two filler punch of “Major Label Debut” and “Fire Eye’d Boy”).
However, the BSS loose ends often align themselves with wonderful, none too busy results. On the faux hip-hop “Hotel,” a requisite “check it” gives way to shuffling drums (it’s supposed to sound kind of like record scratching!), whispered choruses, and a fat bassline, but the track works because it never pretends to be more than baggy Levis hanging off some skinny white dude’s ass. Even the raspy Bacharach horn breaks make sense. Despite the gloss, “Hotel” proves BSS is still just one band under a groove.

And that’s just it: under a groove. Even a rap courtesy of Canadian backpacker k-os on “Windsurfing Nation” ends up muddled somewhere in the middle of the song, buried by the prominent rhythm section and a few other voices and guitar chords gone astray. Sure, that’s the charm of the band (it’s a real group effort with these guys!), but the songs led by dominant vocal melodies are some of the album’s most rewarding. When Kevin Drew takes the center on “Ibi Dreams” and the earthquake rock of “Superconnected,” we’re delighted to find that the band hasn’t forgotten about their YFIIP-era anthemic prowess, and when Metric’s Emily Haines sighs, “and that’s a shame, because I like you,” on “Swimmers,” her airy intonation is a welcome respite from all the, well, noise, already melodic in its own right.

Inexplicably, the album’s closer (“It’s All Gonna Break”) is an undercooked dad rocker, a ham-fisted Springsteen vocal married to something redolent of Wilco’s inoffensive acoustic strum instead of the insane guitar pile-up that we’re used to. It sucks and it’s ten minutes long, and I don’t even want to imagine why, after 12 or so epic-enough songs, the band thought that a couple minutes of Star Wars-esque horns would somehow better articulate their intent. Of course I was confused, but after 63 minutes, I was perfectly happy to finally be surprised.