BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE You Forgot It In People (Paper Bag) Rating: NNNNN Rating: NNNNN
The members of Toronto pop collective Broken Social Scene would no doubt bristle at being called a supergroup, but that’s precisely what they’ve become, in every sense of the word. Bringing together players from a handful of different bands — including Raising the Fawn, Metric, treble charger, Feist and Do Make Say Think — in a kind of compositional communism, where individual ideas are put toward the common good, chief Scene-sters Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning have created an absurdly stacked deck. Unlike their deliberately understated 2001 debut, Feel Good Lost, You Forgot It In People is a bold, beautifully textured pop statement. Moods change from song to song — from pure, sunny pop and moody instrumental rumblers to grandiose, Spiritualized-inspired ballads. But the real accomplishment here is how Drew and Canning pull it all together into one cohesive movement. It’s that rarest of records that works from A to Z without a note wasted. A real accomplishment.
