Broken Social Scene - Broken Social Scene (music)/Review by Moonty

Broken Social Scene

Broken Social Scene

Arts & Crafts, 2005

Broken Social Scene's latest release, the self-titled Broken Social Scene, comes two years after their highly-rated You Forgot It In People, widely regarded to be one of 2003's greatest releases. With Broken Social Scene, the band has expounded upon their once-successful sound without significantly altering it, as is evidenced in tracks like "Hotel," "Finish Your Collapse and Stay For Breakfast" and "Tremoloa Debut," which, regrettably, comprise a very small portion of the release. It's not this element that ends up being so vital to the success of the album, though; gone (for the most part) are the sparsely populated sonic landscapes that made You Forgot It In People such a wild success, replaced, instead, with a murky, dense landscape that is slightly stale by the end of the album.

While Broken Social Scene may have maintained essentially the same sound (more accurately, some of the same sonic qualities, and some of the songwriting tendencies) they have featured heavily in the past, this self-titled release is notable for its fundamentally different mood and feel. Tracks like "Windsurfing Nation," "Superconnected," and "7/4 (Shoreline)" are dense, packed with guitars and sonic noise, that, while mostly evocative and capturing, seem overtly forced.

At times, however, Broken Social Scene suffers from an unfortunate mundanity that wasn't nearly as heavily present in the band's past releases -- which is not to say that this is a mundane album, but rather, it sometimes branches into territory that feels, at the least, over-trodden, both by Broken Social Scene and recent music. There are notable exceptions, most obviously the ten-minute, distinctive "It's All Gonna Break," arguably the album's most dynamic, and undeniably, the most captivating venture. Fortunately, Broken Social Scene ends on a note worth remembering -- a choppy, quick combination of drums, guitars, and horns, ending abruptly -- a perfectly epic, magnanimous ending to an album that ultimately seems sub-par -- but still easily listenable and interesting, though certainly not to the same degree that Broken Social Scene has shown themselves capable.

Matthew Montgomery (Moonty)

Reviewed September 27, 2005 for musicGeek.org