Maybe because they’re Canadian and so gosh darn nice, or
maybe because they were all veterans of the rock ‘n’ roll game before
pooling their resources, but the countless musicians who make up Broken
Social Scene do not need to follow the typical rules that come with
being in a band. In their case, musicians come and go, guests drop by,
solo records are made and become wildly successful (see: Feist), all
without threatening the mothership. The amorphous group has fingers in
almost every pie on the Canadian front: Metric, Stars, Land of Talk,
and countless other bands have members who are part of the Scene. But
even if Broken Social Scene is a collective, a few core members have
shepherded the project since its inception.
One of these is Brendan Canning, who in 2008 released what could be
termed a solo album, but was released as Broken Social Scene
Presents Brendan Canning: Something for All of Us…. Canning tries
to explain the distinction: “There’s a difference insomuch as I got to
have more of my say on the record that’s got my title on it. But in the
same breath, there’s lots of Broken Social Scene members involved.”
Something follows the 2007 release of founding member Kevin
Drew’s Broken Social Scene Presents Kevin Drew: Spirit If…,
and together these records are the modern-day equivalent of the four
KISS solo albums.
The current tour takes songs from both recent records, as well as
the Broken Social Scene repertoire. Canning, Drew, and drummer Justin
Peroff are joined on this outing by Charles Spearin from Do Make Think
Say, Andrew Whiteman from Apostle of Hustle, Sam Goldberg from Uncut,
saxophonist Leon Kingstone of Synthetic Folk Hero, and vocalist Lisa
Lobsinger from Reverie Sound Revue.
A tune from Spearin’s brand-new solo album (which is not being
released under the Broken Social Scene Presents banner) will
also make the set list. Spearin recorded conversations with different
people in his Toronto neighborhood, and used the recordings as a
backbone for the jazz-flecked The Happiness Project. Overdubbed
instruments follow the speech patterns of his subjects, and their
spoken words are stretched over a musical frame to take on rhythmic and
melodic components. It sounds like a gimmick, but it’s an astonishing
listen, giving new context to both the forms of everyday speech and the
craft of musical instrumentation.
“Vanessa” turns a deaf woman’s angular inflections into a flurry of
piano notes, while “Vittoria” transforms a child’s inarticulateness
into an emcee’s swaggering hook and flow. “Mrs. Morris” brings back
fond memories of the foggy-voiced schoolteacher from Peanuts cartoons. The Happiness Project‘s genre-busting presentation
will get people talking, but the record’s humanistic beauty is what
will endear it to listeners.
“Last year we were previewing one song in our set, and the crowd
would sort of perk up at the same moment in the piece,” says Canning.
“I think it could be quite a universal kind of record. Gauging by the
way crowds reacted to it, at the same moment every night, I think it’ll
be appreciated. It’s definitely a different take on music, for
sure.”
Spearin’s incredible new record is just one more satellite in the
ever-expanding Broken Social Scene universe. “We used to have a family
tree on our website,” laughs Canning. “I mean, now it would be
enormous: That was when Feist was still playing with Peaches. It’s all
positive. No one’s making any duds. I can’t complain too much.”