When I first heard of these guys I heard they were the next saviours of rock from Canada. Thus visions of Helix and Lee Aron (the metal queen) came to mind. But this album sounds nothing like those masters of rock. Instead the album is a mess with narry a guitar solo to be found. You can't really bang your head to it anbd there's actually rap on the album. Now when Aerosmith and RunDMC tried that in the eighties it sorta worked but this time its just comes across as derivative. Don't be hoodwinked like I was. Not recommended for fans of ROCK like Ratt or Warrant.

"Broken Social Scene" comes pretty close to being classic, but it falls short. The best reason for this is that the songs are very chaotic, but not necessarily in a good way. They try to create beauty out of chaos in some of the songs, but it doesn't always work - sometimes it just doesn't sound good. However, every song here is good and there are even some great ones (see the first two tracks). It's an absolutely unique sounding lo-fi-ish indie rock album. I suppose the closest bands I could compare it with are Pavement and Dinosaur Jr., but these are a stretch. It's a very refreshing and creative album, yes, but that doesn't always mean that it's great - people looking for something different will at least be very satisfied here. The singer does a very good job with the vocals as he seems to fit the music perfectly; I'm not sure whether most people would like him, though. The lyrics tend to be hard to make out, but they can be interesting on occasion. Musically, like I said before, it's all very creative and inspired, but not necessarily "great" all the way through. They are at least a very promising band with the potential to make a classic album in the future. Basically, if you like lo-fi indie rock or if you're looking for something that's different then all the other bands out there today, then "Broken Social Scene" will please you greatly. Highly recommended!

Highlights include:
the entire album!

As much as I hate to admit it, I never quite got what
all the fuss was about You Forgot it in People. Sure, I
liked it rather a lot - there was a certain rickety charm
to it all - and I dug the way the songs seemed to self-destruct
as they went. All in all a good little album, but not, to
me at least, the flat out unadulterated masterpiece that
everyone made it out to be.

But it was good enough that I was eager to hear the follow up,
this here bit of self titled-extravagence. And it's pretty
amazing. Somehow, these guys have managed to bizarre feat of
adding 6 new memebers and then producing a sound that's
tighter. Tighter in a moment to moment sense, that is. This
albums still sprawls all over the place and does it gloriously.
But from one second to the next, all the disparate elements
seem to support eachvother far more than they did on the
prvious album.

The sound is dense and thick and quite rhythmic - some excellent
drumming/usage of drum machines here. And the songs themselves
have a real urgency, a drive that at times recalls the Arcade
Fire. Style-wise, this is all over the place, while still
keeping a coherent thread - most of the tracks manage to sound
rather different from one another while still undeniably sounding
like the Broken Social Scene. And what ties things together is a
spot on sense of melody and songwriting - the little keyboard
vamp on Hotel (which could be lifted right of a late 80s Cure
album) sticks out in my head. Or the infectious chorus of Fire Eye'd
Boy. Or the oddly agreeable squawks in the background of Windsurfing
Nation. These guys ahve a knack for taking a rather diverse group
of sounds, dropping them in in unlikely places and still having
them support the song. Not many people can do that and I applaud it.

Any downsides? Well, the album loses a bit of momentum right around
Bandwitch, but manages to regain it in the epic closer. And, like
a lot of people have mentioned, the vocals tend to be mixed low. I
realize I'm in the minority here, but I *like* vocals to be low in the
mix (I get in fighits with my own personal bandmates about this all the
time), so this doesn't bug me. If you like to make out every last word?
This could be a bit of a problem for you.

But all in all, I dig this album. A lot. It's big and sprawling and
messy and really really unstoppable.