by LORRAINE CARPENTER

“Charlie Spearin once said to me, ‘It would really be interesting if we tried, in our own way, to revolutionize pop music,’ and I just smiled at him and said, ‘That’d be a lot of fun.’ And that’s why this record is out.”

The words of Kevin Drew, founder of a rotating collective of Toronto/Montreal musicians called Broken Social Scene. With a cast including characters from By Divine Right, Do Make Say Think, Stars, KC Accidental, Change of Heart, Metric and the Bourbon Tabernacle Choir, this T.O.-based “singer-songwriter rock band” balances years of experience—and resultant jadedness—with strong-armed ambition and idealism.

“Charlie’s the reason why we’ll never open for U2,” says Drew, one of the band’s youngest members. “Brendan Canning’s the reason why we won’t tour Canada endlessly, and Andrew Whiteman’s always wanted to play in Prague, he’s gonna get us out of this town.”

Broken Social Scene (a moniker originally prefaced by “John Tesh Jr.,” the name Drew adopted to autograph Do Make Say Think vinyls across Europe) began as a low-slung basement project between Drew and Canning, who unveiled their instrumental, electronic results in the form of Feel Good Lost last year. After a few awkward attempts at live jams “which were no different from the Allman Brothers, really,” the duo roped in a bunch of friends for a series of increasingly unruly shows that bore little resemblance to the album, or to each other for that matter. One gig would feature four musicians playing warm, saccharine pop with vocals by Leslie Feist, while the next would shock with a 10-strong throng playing droning jams and downtempo grooves. Their latest album, You Forgot It in People, amazingly encompasses all of it, the anthemic indie, the ambient dub, the free rock, the orchestral jams and the pristine pop.

“I love 10-minute instrumental tunes, and they’re the easiest to make, but constructing four-minute songs in the studio was baffling. I’ve never been more challenged. By contrast, it’s very easy for us to get together and play. Songwriting has never been a problem, there’s too many beautiful musicians in the band.”

With over 50 tunes laying about on tape and in mind, the Scenesters will issue a companion to their sophomore album this winter, a collection of “late-night” instrumentals from the You Forgot It… sessions. Before that, a scaled-down, six-piece version of the band will head out on a brief tour, but catch them while you can. With kids, spouses and projects a-plenty, BSS shows will likely be rare events, but Drew doesn’t see this as a hindrance. If anything, he’s thinking big, and “beautiful.”

“I know we have a long future ahead of us,” he says. “I can’t say we’re gonna be beautiful lovers—I mean, who knows what’ll happen to us all—but we’ve taken such a different approach from most bands. We’re just trying to do it how we’ve always done it. It’s all one big, wonderful collaboration, and that’s why we’ll still be around in 10 years.” :

With Royal City and Arcade Fire at
la Sala Rossa on Sunday, Dec. 1, 9pm

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