BRO SOCIAL SCENE

Broken Social Scene - Complications (The Clean cover)

Look, I love all BSS-related bands but when they decide to do the Voltron thing and unite for the common purpose of uplifting jams, they can't be touched. Synergy, man. So here they are with some new material which happens to be a cover of The Clean's "Complications". They're no strangers to this having given the BSS treatment to songs by Patti Smith, Paul McCartney and the like in the past. Even Puff, the Magic Dragon got some love. Though this one in particular, is for my bros. See, I've got bros who are down with the Dunedin Sound (Flying Nun Records til death) and don't care much for Broken Social Scene, bros who are the opposite and bros who are partial to both. So consider this particular track as a soundtrack to the listening worlds of some of my closest peers colliding.

As a bonus for my bros who are down with BSS and seeing as how I don't know whether I'll get a more appropriate chance to post this, I'm also including a track they performed on a live radio session back in 03. It's relatively unknown as it's still yet to be given the full studio treatment but it's a gem in it's current state - guitar lines heavy with delay and reverb, sweet boy-girl harmonies and Feist absolutely stealing the song with that hook in the chorus.

Broken Social Scene - New Country

Oh, and I can't be fucked trying to photoshop a picture of Robert Scott and David Kilgour on stage with the entire BSS crew so here is a picturesque and ambiguous mountainscape that can be found in either New Zealand or Canada.


[Broken Social Scene MySpace]

[Complications appears on Score! 20 Years Of Merge Records: The Covers! Buy it from the Merge Records store.]

WE WANT EAZY

Apostle Of Hustle - Eazy Speaks

Andrew Whiteman is one of my guitar gods. I'm also an unabashed Broken Social Scene fanboy so naturally, I've been all over Apostle Of Hustle since their inception. Eats Darkness sees Whiteman and co expanding their palette by dabbling in some more unconventional sounds and textures. "Darker" vibes also seem to be seeping a little more into their Cuban-infused jams but it's a sexy kinda dark. Eazy Speaks is an example of this - there's a driving rhythm, urgent guitars and a much more agressive sound to what I'm used to hearing. However, Whiteman's vocals and the stop-and-go drums ensure your hips never stop swaying. Lastly, I've read that this song is "a tribute to a deceased poet from LA", and with lyrics like "I drink rain and piss out acid", I'm just going to assume that the deceased poet they're referring to is Eazy E. My stamp of approval is so big right now, there's an indent on the record.


[Apostle Of Hustle MySpace]

[Eats Darkness will be released on May 19th. Get it from Arts & Crafts]

OWL VS. DOVE

Metric - Stadium Love

So when Max and Richard asked me to start contributing here, it was gonna be mainly about about hip hop. However, they also gave me free reign to also write about whatever I felt like if the mood struck, so ladies gentlemen, I will now attempt to write about another one of my favourite outfits: BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE. Now, it's a pretty broad range of acts and can encompass anything from silly lyrics about being fucked in the ass and drinking semen accompanied with big guitars and an overabundance of drum flourishes, tropical and country tinged folk, melodramatic love songs through to beautifully constructed pop songs about one night stands (accompanied with the best choreography I've ever seen in a video). There's also the synth and guitar heavy strut that Metric bring to the table.

I guess you could say that a lot of people are really looking forward to Fantasies since the band haven't released any new music since 05's Live It Out. However, Metric are a band I have to be careful with sometimes. For the most part, they're great but every now and again the riffs get a little too FM Rock for my liking and the synths can sometimes bring to mind the worst parts of going to a music festival in Sydney during the summer. They're still guilty of doing this during a few moments on Fantasies but for the most part, it's a great record. It's a lot more cohesive than the last one and brings to mind the best moments of Old World Underground and Grow Up & Blow Away. Stadium Love for example is an exercise in awesomeness. The lyrics make me picture Emily, in her own roundabout way, telling you that your band fucking sucks and that she will eat you alive. She'll used the word "like" about fifty times when doing this all while the band plays on a mountain during sunset.

Dear Emily, right now, I love you more than Leslie.

Kisses.

PS I also know you're a pretty mellow gal sometimes so I've thrown in something old, soft and dreamy.

Metric - London Halflife

[Metric Myspace]

[Fantasies will be released in April. Buy it from their website.]

[Photo courtesy of Stephanie Luong]

HEY, BRISBANE!

What the heck, bro? I'm not sure how the usual jerks/bogans managed to taint Australia's Best Festival (Laneway) but hey, you did it pals. Sure The Presets were playing and all but Future Music was on the same day and I'm sure that'd make a much better place to get all crazy-eyed and jaw-grinding on it, you could've played that hilarious game where you and yr buddy wait in line at the portaloos and race each other with which girl in front of you does her business first or hold yr friends bald head back ("I'm holding his hair back, HAHA") as he vomits violently into the wheely bin...what a sight! I know that Fortitude Valley doesn't exactly boast the scenes of Sydney's Circular Quay but come ooooooonnnn, spread some good vibes instead of being a douche and trying to steal Dan Deacon's glasses and pulling his ears and shit. Okay, it wasn't really that bad, maybe I just had high standards because of how awesome the Sydney one has been the past two years. I wish the sound was better, though; it was easier to enjoy (and actually make out what song it was) Broken Social Scene from the top of the carpark building across the road from The Zoo (where they played their side show). The beers were cheaper up there, too.

[Photo: Dan Deacon @ Outpost Stage by Justin Courageo]

Hypothetical:

People drinking lover's spit? That's fucking gross.

Broken Social Scene are a glorious Canadian institution, instituted in Canada in 1999 as an outlet for non sequiturs thought up by members of Canada's indie rock community, none of whom are Bryan Adams or Celine Dion. Some of them are Leslie Feist, who in 2007 was voted most likely to be objectified by defensive male indie nerds.

“No, because the reason I think she’s hot is because she’s such a strong woman and a talented singer-songwriter!”

Whatever, dork.

Their four albums so far are called Feel Good Lost, You Forgot It In People, Broken Social Scene and Spirit If...

But let us ask ourselves, READERS, what would happen if their album titles started making sense? What if Broken Social Scene stopped playing songs with vague, abstract names like Cause = Time in favour of prosaic ditties about ping-pong, for instance?

2009: Songs of Love and Glacial Teenage Interpersonal Relationships
Featuring covers of Whitney Houston’s I Have Nothing and G.G. Allin’s Drink Fight and Fuck, SLaGTIR, as it’s known by fans, narrowly loses Pitchfork’s Record of the Year to the Arcade Fire’s slightly more literal album We Like Bruce Springsteen More Than Anybody.

2011: Twelve Indie Rock Songs on a Compact Disc
Not to be outdone, Broken Social Scene sing articles from Vice Magazine over a selection of songs from The Smiths’ back catalogue. A Nobel Prize for Music is created and awarded to Kevin Drew.

2016: A Musical Work Performed and Recorded by Suitably Remunerated Professionals
After a five year hiatus, the band return with an album consisting entirely of songs built on the twelve bar blues, with the only lyrics being the chord progressions narrated over the top. The entire US Government abdicates as Broken Social Scene are swept into the White House.

FYI.

Let's hop a fence and do what we almost did

Kevin Drew - Safety Bricks
I can't stop listening to this song. It's been cloudly in Brisbane but the sun's just coming out. It's not overcast here very often so it felt strange to have all this grey stuff over yr head for good (or a day, at least), not just the usual couple of hours. Even though I thought the new (Broken Social Scene Presents) Kevin Drew record Spirit If... was best heard in the hazy late afternoon sun preferably seen out a dust covered window it makes so much sense in the blearly-eyed extremely early morning.



I did an interview with Kevin Drew (one of the two 'core' members of Broken Social Scene)the other day. It was weird. He was moving house in the midst of ridiculously hot weather and was a little P.O.'d. The guy before me had apparently just hung up on him (he seemed cheekily/arrogantly glad to have caused such a close to their conversation). I was sort of glad when Kevin said ‘look, I’m just going to talk to you for the next 15 minutes and tell you about this album and what it means to me’. So maybe the word ‘interview’ is incoreect. I guess we didn’t exchange many views. Not for the first two thirds, at least, but he talked away. I found it extremely inspiring not just because of my BSS fanboyness but for how right this seemed in terms of their music and how right their music seems in the world. It's surely high flown to say that the essence of BSS's sound captures 'the modern condition' and living in this strange world but I'm going to have to latch onto it this way because it's such an easy and relevant and important empathy. I'm glad someone is thinking about this stuff.

"There were about 23 people that featured. There were just so many guests that I wanted to work with. We made it on the basis that we were just recording. The biggest problem about this record was making it into an album, because we were just recording for the sake of recording and we had tones of freedom to do whatever we wanted so I was able to work in the space where I could sing twelve or sixteen songs and it didn’t matter, I didn’t have to think about anyone around me, I wasn’t thinking in the BSS format. I was just constantly recorring as much as I could. Now, that being said, this is what we came up with. Over a period of two years while we were touring and living our lives, we recording it into these songs. Then we selected what we thought would be a good record from them, this is what now is called Spirit If... Within the idea of calling it Spirit If, it was the ultimate battle between ‘what if’, the ‘what if’ society that we live in now, the ‘what if’ society that haunts basically everyone, the ‘what if’ society that is pretty much destroying modern day romance, modern day-to-day idealism. We’re always taught that there’s something else; there’s always something else out there. There’s a romanticism that has betrayed a lot of us. We called the record Spirit If... because…well…I actually had no idea why we called it spirit if, Ohad came up with the title, I had a close friend say that’s amazing, I titled it and thought long and hard with it and this is the theory that I came up with, it’s kind of the ultimate smack against the ‘what if’ society that we have all really become, and today, in this day and age, its just kind of become ridiculous how we’ve become addicted to trying out ways of not fully living in the moment so we can always have other moments to fall back onto and live with this. This is a very very personal record for me. I didn’t really intend to sit and do interviews about it, the intention was to realign me with the idea of recording. The intention was to realign me with the process of recording, which id lost with BSS because we worked with a producer that very much had his own way and because there are so many members in the band that you always had to leave space for people. But with this album I was able to fill it up with any way that I want to and I was working with two incredibly gifted people who let me do that. This was my seventh record with Charles Ferris, it just shows you that these are the people that I want to be with. The idea that the whole band is on there anyway, so why is it a solo record? Is it a solo record? Not really; it’s a version of BSS through my eyes and my voice, and it also is a version that didn’t really involve key people that are BSS so it could not be BSS record. Also, we live in a time where bands are always kidnapped by lead singers and they start to go their own way, do their own thing, write their own songs, take all the publishing, live there own lives and not pay their fucken players and blah blah blah blah blah. I couldn’t be a part of that, I’m addicted to working with people, its something I love to do, I love the process of ideas and hearing people play, especially when the players I have at my disposal to play with are not only friends but exceptional human beings to play with. So within that, within this whole speech, that’s my version of telling you what this record’s about. What do you think? Is that okay for you?"

Yes, thanks. Why don't more musicians talk about their world instead of just the music? Maybe I just ask the wrong questions.

Listen to Teeth to Learn How To Quit

I just went to see Half Nelson and it met (and maybe just peaked over) my high expectations. I'm certainly biased, mind you: Broken Social Scene are surely one of my favourite bands, and they provide the soundtrack. It works extremely well in nearly every scene that it features, but talking to people afterwards, it didn't seem like anyone was as moved or affected by the whole thing as I was. The decline of a very real character overcome with apathy and futility and an fairly extreme drug habit was depicted with a lot of poignancy and without too much existential cliché; it never came across hackneyed to me, but maybe I've just listened and loved too much Broken Social Scene because it was the juxtaposition of their recordings and the disorientating cinematography (lots of shifts in focus), raw emotion, character development. 'Lover's Spit' can be found on the album You Forgot it in People but on the film they opted for the alternate version which is slowed down and stripped back to just piano and vocals. This is used a couple of times, the second time to such a powerful effect, way down the line in protagonist Dan's struggle. Other more ambient songs from Feel Good Lost cast a blanket of malaise over the film, sitting seamlessly alongside the blurry camera work and abstracted backgrounds.

It's the sort of music that has moments of hope and brightness but often sounds precarious and reminds me of a hangover or a bleary eyed early morning. I could go on a lot more about how perfect a soundtrack BSS are to a film but right now I feel like how 'Guilty Cubicles' sounds; hungover and jaded. Anyway, you should check the film out. Ryan Gosling's acting was superb (as all those reviews have said) and overall it was just an extremely well laid out film. A somewhat harrowing and affecting watch, but at least it has a rockin' soundtrack I guess.