![]() But Drew saw it as an affirmation of purpose. ![]() It was something that I’ll never forget.”įor Canning, the evening had a sort of strange symmetry: a right-band, right-place scenario which has been almost a trademark of Broken Social Scene and their emotional connection with their fans since they started out in the late 1990s. ![]() You see a city, there was incredible sadness, but you also see it talking about love and hope and rising above. Johnny came out Emily, who wrote the song, was there to sing it. “We happened to be a band who speed metal we are a band about loss, life-living and coming together. “We were there that night and we happened to be able to play,” Drew says. What’s most important is tonight we’re here together, all of us.” Drew ambled, hands tucked into his body, before introducing Marr (“He is your city he is your legend”), who had changed his mind at the 23rd hour, to perform the aptly titled “Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl.” Video footage of that night shows the group-Drew, Canning, Jimmy Shaw and Emily Haines (also of Metric), the husband-and-wife duo of Ariel Engle and Andrew Whiteman (also of AroarA), Spearin and drummer Justin Peroff-busying themselves uneasily as the show begins. Read Paste’s review of Broken Social Scene’s Hug of Thunder here. Recalling their qualms about playing that night, Drew said the group concluded that “everyone else went to work that day. Marr, a Manchester native, called saying he was too distraught to perform. The following afternoon, the group contemplated whether they could go on. Then, 24 hours before they were due onstage, terrorists attacked an Ariana Grande concert at the nearby Manchester Arena, killing 22 people. Drew and Canning had improbably gathered the majority of the group’s 15 members (pretty much everyone save breakout singer Leslie Feist, who was promoting her own album), even wooing Smiths guitarist and longtime friend Johnny Marr as a surprise guest. The show, at the Albert Hall in Manchester, was intended as a celebration of, and introduction to, the group’s first new material in seven years. There is, however, one moment in recent memory the three agree was truly life-changing.īack in May, Broken Social Scene were in England for the first stop on a comeback trail leading up to Friday’s release of their fifth album, Hug of Thunder. Standing around a table in a vacant upstairs pool hall, the Social Scensters play out a constant power-dynamic, intermediately switching between waxing effervescent and tiptoeing around one another’s world view-Drew caustically pessimistic, Spearin cautiously optimistic, Canning somewhere in between. After a seven-year recording break, the group proved they hadn’t missed a beat with 2017’s Hug of Thunder, another ambitious indie manifesto filled with rousing anthems steeped in BSS’ uplifting yet defiant spirit.It’s a sunny, breezy afternoon in downtown Toronto, but hanging with Broken Social Scene’s core trio of singer-guitarist Kevin Drew and bassists Brendan Canning and Charles Spearin, you’d hardly know it. As the group expanded, they grew looser, louder, and more uninhibited on 2005’s self-titled release, before reining in that noise (just a bit) on 2010’s Forgiveness Rock Record, an album that highlights their inherent romanticism and post-rock roots. It was also the first release on Arts & Crafts, a now thriving independent label and artist management company cofounded by Drew. The Juno Award-winning collection fluctuates between blistering baroque rock and blissful dream pop-a grandiose sum of all 15 members involved. But those ambient experiments served as ideal templates to build from, as local artists like Feist and members of bands including Stars, Do Make Say Think, and Metric jumped in to create BSS’ breakthrough release, 2002’s You Forgot It In People. On their 2001 debut, Feel Good Lost, the duo had some help from friends to flesh out their mostly instrumental, post-rock arrangements. Over the years, their sound has been as fluid as their lineup, but in 1999, they began as just two: singers/songwriters/multi-instrumentalists Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning. Boasting a who’s who of Toronto iconoclasts, collective Broken Social Scene has provided some of the most intimate and unbridled indie-rock moments of the 21st century.
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