One gets the sense that the particulars - who wrote the song or who is playing what instrument - matter less than the simple experience of creating music as a collective. In the video, the backlit band swells in size, as faceless and silhouetted figures dance through the musical chaos. It was 2002’s “You Forgot It in People” that introduced the band’s uniquely democratic approach to songwriting and recording, perhaps best exemplified by the song “Almost Crimes.”Īn angsty duet between Drew and Feist, the track is packed with sounds and ideas to the point of nearly rupturing - there are countless layers of guitar, distorted bass, a saxophone solo, a midsong noise freakout. Over time, a core group of musicians - consisting of Canning, Drew, Andrew Whiteman, Charles Spearin and drummer Justin Peroff - emerged, around which a revolving door of musicians would orbit. The duo initially invited their friends and other artists to join the band in order to flesh out their live performances. Their debut album, “Feel Good Lost” (2001), was a subdued, mostly instrumental project, filled with the reverb-drenched guitars that would come to characterize the band’s later works. “We just decided to hang a banner up and put a name on it.”Ĭanning co-founded Broken Scene Social with Drew in 1999. “I mean, every city has a scene,” he added. “We’re kind of like a Wu-Tang Clan or something,” Canning - a multi-instrumentalist, vocalist and one of the band’s core members - dryly remarked during a video call with the Star this month. Today, one could easily spend a couple of hours on Wikipedia trying to trace the tangled web of Canadian artists and acts associated with the band, whose ever-changing lineup has ranged between six and 19 members - including heavy hitters like Leslie Feist, Emily Haines ( Metric), Amy Millan ( Stars), Jason Collett, Ohad Benchetrit ( Do Make Say Think) and Lisa Lobsinger ( Reverie Sound Revue), to name a few. Written by Brendan Canning and Kevin Drew but featuring contributions from dozens of local musicians, the album managed to harness the freewheeling energy of Toronto’s burgeoning indie scene - a winning formula that makes Broken Social Scene one of the most influential alternative groups of the 21st century. It’s been nearly two decades since the release of “You Forgot It in People,” a bona fide indie rock classic that transformed Broken Social Scene from a two-man basement project into a sprawling and amorphous music collective.
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