Formed in: 1999, Toronto, Canada
Key Albums: You Forgot It in People (2002), Broken Social Scene (2005)
Broken Social Scene are less traditional band, more amorphous 'collective'. Founded by Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning, the band has expanded to include an ever-changing cast of over 20 humans, all friends from the Toronto music scene. Humans to have spent time in Broken Social Scene include songstress Leslie Feist and alt-country crooner Jason Collett, plus members of Stars, Metric, The Dears, Do Make Say Think, The American Analog Set, and Land of Talk.
Background
Broken Social Scene were born in 1999, when Drew and Canning met whilst working at a downtown Toronto club. They began as a way for he and co-founder Kevin Drew to “get to know one another through music."“There wasn’t a whole lot of that talk, like: ‘You love Yo La Tengo? I love Yo La Tengo!’ or ‘Do you love John Coltrane?’; we were more interested in exploring each other’s approach to playing music,” Canning recalls.
Both of them had played in local acts —Drew in KC Accidental, Canning in hHead— but, most importantly, Canning had worked with the novelty-rap/pop combo Len, whose one-hit-wonder, "Steal My Sunshine," would bankroll the recording of BSS’s largely-instrumental, longplaying debut, 2001's Feel Good Lost.
Beginnings
Recorded, in Drew's basement, on a borrowed eight-track, Feel Good Lost was, at essence, the work of Drew and Canning. But, as they progressed with recordings, the pair decided to get their friends involved. Those ranks included many future BSS members: Justin Peroff, Charles Spearin, Leslie Feist and Evan Cranley; Feist, at the time, a singer working with Gonzales, Cranley a member of the pop outfit Stars.
From this, the band branched out into a wide-ranging, curiously connected community of interchangeable players, many of whom Drew had worked with in KC Accidental, or had appeared on Feel Good Lost. In performing live, Broken Social Scene would grow to included Feist, countryish songsmith Jason Collett, and members of Toronto bands like Stars, Metric, and Do Make Say Think.
"We really were a social scene; we all would see each other, hang out with each other," Drew recounts. "There were so many bands going on, that that was how we’d maintain our personal lives: we’d get together, play shows, go to shows, see each other at each others’ other shows.”
Arrival
Though the release of 2002's You Forgot It in People certainly marked Broken Social Scene's 'breakout' moment, for the band, their uprising had been building up. “Even before we released You Forgot It in People, at the shows in Toronto it seemed like we were a band that was developing a decent following,” Canning claims. “But, that’s just because we had such a large friend base. There’s so many of us that it wasn’t that hard to fill up a room with two or three hundred of our friends. And that grows, because your friends tell their friends, and, from that, just from that word-of-mouth, we seemed to be like a good thing to bet on.”
After You Forgot It in People scored a 9.2 on the well-trafficked website Pitchfork Media, Broken Social Scene became one of the first bands to be "Forked" into popularity. In the face of swiftly-escalating popularity, Broken Social Scene found their identity changing.
“Interviews, photoshoots, radio-performances, live-performances, video-shoots; these are all demands that, in theory, forward your career, and that represent you as a ‘band’ in that traditional sense,” Canning lamented.
In the midst of constant touring, with an ever-changing line-up, Broken Social Scene set out work on their follow-up to You Forgot It in People. Recorded in that "chaotic" time, the self-titled Broken Social Scene album was, Canning says, a “two-year-long saga of trying to start and start again.” The album ended up costing the band, reportedly, upwards of $100,000, and sounded for all the world like an overconsidered, bloated opus.
This, Drew says, reflects the business-centric era of the band that it represents. “It just became more of a battle than it did something fun," Drew surmises. "You talk more than you play: you do the interviews, you discuss the next strategy mission, you plan around the music and talk about the music, but you don’t play the music. And when you do, you’re stuck in the repetition of playing the same songs every night. It really does become taxing, and becomes abusive to your original passion, the reason you started playing as a band in the first place.”
Developments
In 2007, Broken Social Scene sought to return to their routes by recasting their on-the-record identity as 'recording project'. This translated to a series of 'Broken Social Scene Presents' records, in which one member would take center-stage, underneath the BSS banner. Fittingly, the first two releases were by their founding members: Drew's Spirit If..., in 2007, and Canning's Something for All of Us in 2008.
“We wanted an outlet outside of this brand that we’d built, this army of women and singers and the strings and the horns and the 17 people on stage," Drew said, of this dramatic reinvention. "We wanted something else, somewhere we could release film work, and ambient ditties, free from this tour-de-force that Broken Social Scene had become over that five year period."
