During that time, I had never recorded on an eight-track machine: It was a pretty primitive recording. We’d go out for drinks and have fun, come back around midnight and work until 7 or 8 in the morning. What were your first impressions of the collaboration?īrendan Canning: It was just a very intimate experience because we were in Kevin’s basement and we would often work really late hours. VMP: This is the album where you and Kevin Drew were first getting to know each other. “Passport Radio,” off Feel Good Lost (2001) Read on for Canning’s takes on songs ranging from Feel Good Lost to Hug of Thunder. Founder and bassist Brendan Canning has been at the band’s core throughout and has given Vinyl Me, Please the stories behind five of the band’s most important tracks. The band’s family tree extends out like a labyrinth with limbs holding acts like Feist, Stars, Metric, Apostle of Hustle, Do Make Say Think, and so many more. Often affectionately dubbed as a “mothership,” Broken Social Scene is the home base for a countless number of Toronto musicians. And this month, the band is back with another offering: the first of two EPs out this year called Let’s Try The After Vol. Seven years later, the band released Hug of Thunder, cementing a five-album streak as solid as any of their peers. The LP found the collective for the first time, spending time away from Toronto, mostly tracking the effort in Chicago with Tortoise’s John McEntire. While it was a rough period for the band compared to their honeymoon genesis, it featured some of the most defining tracks of their catalog like “7/4 (Shoreline),” “Superconnected” and “Major Label Debut.”įollowing solo albums under the Broken Social Scene Presents moniker and several “last shows ever” as a touring apparatus, the band returned with the excellent 2010 Forgiveness Rock Record. After the rise, Broken Social Scene returned with their self-titled LP in 2005. It was Broken Social Scene’s breakthrough, not just highlighting the group’s transition from basement project to full-fledged music collective with an expanding and constantly evolving roster, but also winning Canada’s Juno Award for Alternative Album of the Year. While mostly instrumental, the LP foreshadowed the wildly collaborative spirit the band would embody with their masterwork, 2002’s You Forgot It In People. The experimental and lovely album featured their friends, like singer Leslie Feist, drummer Justin Speroff, and multi-instrumentalist Charles Spearin, who mixed the effort. Formed by Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning in 1999, the two wrote and recorded the band’s post-rock inspired debut in Drew’s basement. This year marks the 20th anniversary of Broken Social Scene, the pioneering Toronto collective responsible for the most influential indie rock albums of the last couple decades.

Social scene hoodie