This Book is Broken – A Story of Broken Social Scene

Broken Social Scene is the nucleus around which other dominant artists revolve. Ask any individual attuned to the iTunes homepage who Feist is and there should be no lapse in recollection, no awkward stares. Likewise, fringier bands like Metric, Stars, and even The Dears and Constantines circumnavigate the BSS universe with their friendlier, i.e., less murky and more accessible songs. Regardless, however, BSS is the center upon which all these personas gravitate like a magnets finding their polar opposites and colliding together with a purely explainable, yet profound force. BSS is like a nuclear collision course, a perfect storm of melody, guitars, breakneck drumming, and ultra talented musicians. And their second LP, You Forget It In People still pummels the senses a mere seven years later.

What should be readily apparent, if not utterly obvious though, is how BSS were essentially placed squarely on the musical map with the help of the juggernaut online presence of Pitchfork. You Forget It In People was awarded a damn-near perfect rating of “9.2” on the site and blossomed into a buzz machine of hipster (and Canadian) coolness that was on everyone’s lips. This fact, however, is severely understated in the book: “…a rave review from popular online magazine Pitchfork had piqued the interest of stateside indie enthusiasts, many of whom acquired the album through peer-to-peer download networks.” Factually accurate, the previous statement is a bit like saying, “the crowd seemed to enjoy themselves at Shea Stadium as the four men known as The Beatles played some of their popular hits.”

Author Stuart Berman has a close relationship with many of the members of BSS. He is an editor at Eye Weekly, a Toronto independent weekly that was initially responsible for the first positive press granted to BSS. Additionally, Berman has written for Pitchfork (though he did not write the glowing review of either BSS full-lengths) and thus used previous and newly conducted interviews with BSS members and associates to compile This Book is Broken. “Compile” is the apt term in this instance; Berman has arranged the book into chapters where he provides an introduction and then assembles a narrative out of a multitude of the subjects’ responses.

Two schools of thought immediately spring to mind on this type of biographical structure: one, the book is a more representational artifact of the band because the author’s presence is minimal and seeks only to present firsthand knowledge, and, two, the books suffers from a lack of cohesiveness usually granted to more ordered profiles or biographies. There are occasions when the book works seamlessly, specifically the chapters detailing the life of the band after their rise to near-ubiquity. Each character with a part in the BSS production is granted lengthier page space to explain their observations and offer their critiques. Band members and the like seem unknowingly free to discuss the perils of stardom. For example, Evan Cranley offers his perspective when noting, “The impromptu magic that originally defined Broken Social Scene was kind of lost when it became more about putting on a show…” Additionally, Jason Collett and Justin Peroff touch briefly on the capricious and bullying personality of co-founder Kevin Drew, “Everybody perhaps benefited and suffered from Kevin’s various whims,” is the prevailing theme when stardom strikes. And Peroff expounds, stating, “You’re given a role because you manifested an audience and people are listening. You can say whatever you want and people might believe it.” Through these expositions, as well as a light touching upon the band’s interpersonal and sexual relationships, it becomes easy to chart the band along a traditional rockstar graph: initial band concept evolves from enjoyable musical collage to eventual almost-collapse under the weight of personalities, money, and the excesses of touring.

Berman (intentionally, perhaps) avoids most of the latter part of the formula and lasers in the former, earlier efforts of the band(s); which proves to be unfortunate since the early formations of BSS simply entails a bunch of friends living in a sort of communal city/village and getting together to “create something.” It takes a hefty amount of fortitude to muddle through the first three chapters without questioning the purpose behind yet another biography of a band with relatively little recorded output. Charging through to the latter half of the book offers a more rewarding read, however, especially the details behind the recording process of the final two BSS records—which can be unexpectedly humorous at times: “Recording was a disaster at first, because I had done a lot of changes in my studio just before Broken Social Scene came in, and stuff was blowing up and had not been tested. One of the compressors had smoke coming out of the back,” recalls engineer and producer Dave Newfield. Overall, it might not be wrong to start in the middle of the text to glean the most pertinent and interesting stories from the crop.

Like the band, Berman’s book can be a mess. It is less a musical biography and more a collage of artistic design, photos, set lists, and other minutiae that pull the band into more focus than before. Berman’s prose can sometimes border on the groan-inducing (“United by their disillusionment, Canning, Feist, and Whiteman had formed a social scene—but without any breaks.”) and keeping track of the cast of characters is numbing on occasion (even though the book provides a “Cast List” at the beginning for guidance). For BSS fans it may be necessary to gauge the level of fanaticism before making a decision about Berman’s book. If you’re a casual BSS fan impressed with their records, but tend not to salivate over all news of the BSS family, then you may want to pick this up at the library for the pictures and extensive interviews. Everyone else should be just fine without it cluttering their shelves.

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