The Ultimate Collective: How Broken Social Scene Changed the Communal Aspect of Music

Features, The Decade in Music '00-'09 • Monday November 23rd, 2009 • 12:00 am

At the turn of this decade, garage rock reigned. Nearly every band with some buzz started with the letters “T-h-e.” Less was more. Simplicity was better.

But sometimes less isn’t more. Sometimes, to continue speaking in clichés, the more the merrier. And no band exemplifies this better than Toronto experimental pop collective Broken Social Scene.

In 2002, Broken Social Scene released one of the first game changing, life affirming albums of the decade, and it came to us completely out of the blue. That album, the Pitchfork-discovered, indie kid frenzying You Forgot it in People, mixed beauty with cacophony, simplicity with chaos and atmospheric experimentalism with grounded hooks and pop vocals.

An exercise in multiplicity on all levels, the sundry, layered soundscapes on the album were the result of having a massive, diverse band of music makers. The number of co-conspirators pushed into double-digit territory, with an additional five guests – an enormous expansion from the original duo, Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning, who created Broken Social Scene’s largely instrumental, 2001 post-rock release Feel Good Lost.

Filling out the ranks was a bold, albeit logical, move from a band not exactly known for understatement. Drew and Canning sought a way to make the live performance of their ambient debut more exciting, and brought in some friends to liven up the musical experience. Pulling from Drew’s fellow Etobicoke School of the Arts graduates, as well as other Toronto players, the result was far from anything resembling the rock quartet.

Changing album-to-album, the roster eventually swelled to include a large litter of Toronto’s best and brightest: Drew, Canning, Andrew Whiteman (Apostle of Hustle), Emily Haines (Metric, Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton), Jimmy Shaw (Metric), Amy Millan (Stars), Torquil Campbell (Stars), Evan Cranley (Stars), Leslie Feist (Feist), Charles Spearin (Do Make Say Think, The Happiness Project), Bill Priddle (Treble Charger, The Priddle Concern), Jason Tait (The Weakerthans), Jason Collett, Ohad Benchetrit (Do Make Say Think), John Crossingham (Raising the Fawn), Sam Goldberg, Marty Kinack, Leon Kingstone, Lisa Lobsinger, Julie Penner (Do Make Say Think), Justin Peroff, Elizabeth Powell (Land of Talk), and producer David Newfeld, as well as guest spots from rapper K-os, J. Mascis of Dinosaur Jr, and Murray Lightburn of The Dears.

It’s not an easy group to keep track of, to be sure.

But being a collective means more than just amassing a large group of talented players. A large part of the Broken Social Scene aesthetic was the organic collaboration that emerged while creating You Forgot It In People as well as its follow-up, Stars. Drew and Canning, admittedly the core songwriters for the group, assembled the most talented of their peers, friends and fellow partners in crime, not to sit idly by, but to join them in the sandbox and get their hands dirty, too.

And they all dug in, up to their elbows. Unlike some super groups that wear the signatures of their members proudly on their separate sleeves, Broken Social Scene knows its strength lies in the sum of its parts. Who did what, though interesting to go full music geek about, isn’t nearly as important as what was being played, and, really, how well it all sounds together. The most compelling aspect about BSS, especially on their eponymous third disc, is that we get the sense that they would still be getting together and making this music even if there was no outlet for it. We are somehow irrelevant to the sweet chaos stirred up by their musical dialogue, and we should count ourselves lucky to be flies on sonic wall.

More structured than simple impromptu jam sessions, in transitioning from a solid unit to a collective Broken Social Scene really helped to redefine what it means to be a band. Although every member doesn’t play on every song (and really, how could they?), post You Forgot It In People, it suddenly seemed like maybe having a really large band wasn’t such a bad idea after all. Mixing and matching different collaborators meant that the band could switch gears from tropical instrumental sounds to distorted repetition and even some hip-hop party swagger, yet, with all members working towards a uniform goal, maintaining a common thread.

Gone, too, were the typically unseen walls that dictated a band as a unit with specific members playing specific instruments. Not the case here, where many Broken Social Sceners are multi-instrumentalists and switch up duties song-to-song. In working as a collective, too, rather than as a band in the traditional sense, members can come and go, work on other, unrelated musical projects and contribute as much or as little as his or her schedule dictates. And the members of Broken Social Scene certainly haven’t had trouble doing exactly that.

In the digital age where fans need something new seemingly every second of every day, Broken Social Scene is a music retailer’s dream. Over 35 full-length records this decade can claim ties to the collective, most of which feature several members again joining forces. Attempts to map out the Broken Social Scene family tree would no doubt result in a sprawling, unkempt spider web. The collective nature of the Scene extends beyond projects boasting the BSS moniker to separate, and decidedly different, endeavors.

With Canada well known to the masses as the home country of Alanis Morissette, The Guess Who, Avril Lavigne, Barenaked Ladies and, um, Loverboy, for many indie rock newcomers, discovering Broken Social Scene, and subsequently their myriad associated acts, opened up Toronto, and Canada as a whole, as a legitimate breeding ground of music that is, quite simply, good. Add in Montreal based bands like Arcade Fire and Wolf Parade, and even Calgary’s Tegan and Sara, to the mix and Canadian indie rock went from being virtually ignored to becoming one of the aughts’ hottest commodities.

With all of their mangled interweaving, BSS highlighted Canada, specifically Toronto, as an incestuous place full of incredibly talented, creative musicians who can walk the line, or push it, and know exactly when and where to do so. Of this decade’s many experimental pop pursuers, Broken Social Scene is certainly one of the style’s premier names. We find ourselves in 2009 with some of the latter part of the decade’s most lauded bands as experimental pop acts (see: Grizzly Bear, Animal Collective). In 10 years we’ve gone from attempting to replicate rock’s roots to finding new ways and places to plant them, and from working the most basic lineups, to creating large, boisterous, beasts of musical burden.

By 2006, when the Scene released their eponymous third album (following b-sides and rarities disc Bee Hives), Arcade Fire had already emerged with their big-in-number baroque pop masterpiece Funeral. With the exception of Jack White, many of the earlier decade garage rock bands had fallen by the wayside in favor of larger, over-the-top musical productions, and, at the end of the decade, though still riding a similar vibe, even Jack White has traded in his two piece for not one but two different bands, the five-piece The Raconteurs and supergroup quartet The Dead Weather.

And Jack White is not alone. Artists are releasing more albums faster and alongside more than just the usual suspects. Just this year, we’ve heard from Monsters of Folk, Them Crooked Vultures, and the bizarre grouping of Tinted Windows and, regardless of outcome or quality, the fact remains that our substantiated rock stand-bys (and not so stand-bys) are reaching out to friends and fellow artists to create more and do so differently.

Although the supergroup definitely differs from a collective, on a basic level the goals are the same: take some great musicians, throw ‘em in a blender, and see what that sonic smoothie sounds like. However, while in a supergroup most members are well known beforehand and aim to collaborate on only that project, the collective continues to pursue collaboration outside of any one album or any one band. Even Sufjan Stevens and his entourage (Rosie Thomas, Denison Witmer, My Brightest Diamond and other members from the Asthmatic Kitty label) follow the premise of being a collective with even less strict rules than Broken Social Scene, convening together to aid one another on their own, separate projects.

No discussion of Broken Social Scene could be complete without touching on a comparison to the New Pornographers, the Vancouver-born supergroup that slightly predates BSS. Although each Pornographer has his or her own main project (or in the case of A.C. Newman, side project), their inter-collaboration begins and ends with the Newman-Bejar-Case-Dahle-Calder-Collins-Fancey-Thurier lineup.

Regardless, be it in the form of a supergroup or collective, with the advancements of social networking and communication tools, as well as more and more outlets to find music, moving into the next decade should only provide more opportunities for musicians to band together and collaborate in new, different ways.

Sure, fans demand more than ever before, but even social tools like Twitter make it even easier to reach out to other musicans for collaboration, help, and insight. Idols may still be idols, but the variety of social networks available erase the illusion of boundaries, for fans as well as other musicians. Even location becomes less of an issue when musicians can digitally send files and collaborate across vast distances. The obstacles of collaboration and collectivism — with the exception of music business bureaucracy — have all but disappeared.

Broken Social Scene has proved that meaningful, interesting music can be made by a mob of musicians; the end result is far better than the expected incomprehensible noise. It’s not what we’re used to, and yet it kind of is. Rock and roll has been collaborative for decades, a dialogue between bands and fans, songwriters and musicians, but it is rare to see a band fully embrace this nature and it seems to be happening more and more.

The bottom line? Most music is collaborative. The collective goes against the scientific nature of being in a band, yet truly exemplifies what’s at the core of music. Music is a dialogue, always. Music is about people, for people. A shared experience, it connects the band and the fans, the songwriters and the players, whether it’s heard alone or in a group, written by one or by many.

No band exists in a vacuum, and the collective takes full advantage of that fact. As we move into the next decade, as it becomes easier to find new music and easier for musicians to find each other more musicians will come together and take up the collective mantle and, hopefully, create the best records of the next decade.

Tagged as: 2009 Year End

By Natalie David

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“Rock and roll has been collaborative for decades, a dialogue between bands and fans, songwriters and musicians, but it is rare to see a band fully embrace this nature”