Broken Social Scene - Hug Of Thunder

The Quietus

It was not without a certain trepidation that one awaited Broken Social Scene’s appearance at the End Of The Road festival last summer. The Canadian group serve as the very definition of 'sprawling collective', with all the downsides that come with that tag. Given free rein, they have been known to meander on and on – then on and on some more, before topping it all off by going on and on some more – and one show at the Astoria in London in 2006 springs to mind, a set so long and boring that Transport for London had knocked down the venue and started building the Crossrail station before the band even got to the encore.

On the other hand, when forced into a little discipline, they could astound. At their first London show, at the Barfly in Camden, early in 2003, given a slot of no more than an hour, they were simply brilliant, the very best of their songs presented concisely and with absolute definition. Leslie Feist singing ‘Anthems For A Seventeen Year Old Girl’ that night was a quite staggering five minutes of live music.

At End Of The Road we got the disciplined version of BSS. Again, they had just 60 minutes, and by the hour’s end, the crowd had swollen massively, drawn by euphoric brass fanfares and songs that communicated the very sense of what people go to music festivals for: one felt both alone with the music, and lost in the crowd at the same time. It was epic in all the right ways, and none of the wrong ones.

But it’s one thing to appear on a Sunday teatime in front of a festival crowd who are finally getting some sunshine after a bucketload of rain, playing your old favourites, another entirely to make a new album that manages to encapsulate your strengths, to remind people of what they loved in the first place, and still take them somewhere new. It’s harder still when the seven years since your previous album have seen your style of music – and let’s not beat about the bush, BSS are an indie band – disappear from fashion.

When they made their breakthrough in 2003, it was on the back of a rave review in Pitchfork for the album You Forgot It In People that made them one of the first beneficiaries of 'The Pitchfork Effect', in which they were propelled far beyond where they might otherwise have expected to land. The idea, now, that they might generate such excitement is, frankly, laughable, as you might have gathered from the lack of excited interviews appearing in the press in the run-up to this record. You might argue that this doesn’t matter, that it’s all about the music. But it’s not. It’s almost never all about the music: pop is built on the thrill of the new, of the charge of excitement that enters a room when a band has not just great songs, but great buzz, a great story, an ineffable air of being something new and alien placed into one’s life just to add some sparkle. Which means that Hug of Thunder has to be awfully, awfully good to compete with people’s memories of You Forgot It In People or Forgiveness Rock Record.

It is awfully, awfully good. It’s brilliant. It’s the record Broken Social Scene have always had within them, but perhaps never quite achieved. I can’t help but contrast my memories of BSS’s first London show with Arcade Fire’s own debut in the capital, where Win Butler’s eyes remained firmly focussed on a point a couple of hundred feet beyond the back wall of King’s College Student Union. Arcade Fire always had a gimlet eyed ambition – their template was, basically, Broken Social Scene pulled sharply into focus, with added Whoa Whoa Whoas – and as result, they were the sprawling Canadian collective who got to fill arenas. Hug of Thunder is a record as anthemic and uplifting and contradictory as anything Arcade Fire have made, but without the slightly offputting sense of calculation. Had it come out in 2006, they’d be the ones filling the arenas now.

On Hug of Thunder, ambience and precision alternate. The title track alone – my favourite song of year, and a gorgeous performance from Feist – drifts from reverie, seemingly meaningless, into a memory as sharp as a digital photograph: “The Kennys said I broke in over the summer / It was the evening when he climbed that tree / I was afraid what he was doing inside so I followed him to stop a robbery.” And then it yanks back into a chorus whose meaning is found not in its words, but in the sensations it evokes. It talks of the numbness we feel, but it is anything but numb: it insists on our involvement, in our commitment to community, in the light that can chase away darkness. And then it fades out, on an unsettling lurch back into reality: “There was a military base across the street / We watched them training while we leaned.”

The passing years and changing fashions have been noted, too. If ‘Mouth Guards Of The Apocalypse’ notes that “It’s dancer and hatred / And the radio sounds like shit”, then Stay Happy – while never likely to be mistaken for the work of Kelela – takes in little stabs of R&B-inflected synthetic horns, setting them afloat on a backing track that moves from a minute or so of fanfare on to something choppy, poppy, loose-limbed and summery. And then throws in huge trombone breaks, just in case things were getting a bit too straightforward.

Nothing here moves straightforwardly from A to B, but nothing feels as if it has been thrown in just because someone had the idea to do it. Sometimes in the past, one had the slight sense that Broken Social Scene were burying their songs beneath too many ideas. There’s no shortage of ideas here, but the songs manage to match their sophistication with simplicity. The hearts of the songs – the melodies, the glorious melodies – are brought to the foreground, and the interludes from the principal melodies serve to throw them into sharper contrast rather than to obscure them. For all its ambition, its musical discursiveness, Hug of Thunder is a very direct album. You do not have to uncover its pleasures; they are offered up to you.

What makes it even more of a triumph is the fact it was not an easy album to make. For a start, there was the matter of getting 17 musicians to assorted studios at assorted times to record their assorted contributions. There was the fact that 17 musicians bring 17 egos and 17 points of view. There were personal problems. “You know,” Kevin Drew told me earlier this year, “Fleetwood Mac has nothing on us, nothing, when it comes to inter-band relationships. There have been moments where it’s like, ‘What the fuck did we get ourselves into?’” And even when the album was done, it wasn’t done. Mixing and mastering dragged on past the appointed due date, rarely signs that all is going well with an album.

But what has emerged is Broken Social Scene’s best album. A decade ago it would have been a career-maker. Half a decade ago it would have been enough to get them on to the covers of magazines. Now it has to settle for its own description of itself. It really is a hug of thunder.

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Pitchfork 84

On their first album in seven years, Broken Social Scene distill their sound to a vital essence. The band is focused and renewed, invigorated by the missionary spirit of their best work.

The Guardian 80

(City Slang)

With 15 members and a rickety yet ambitious sound, Broken Social Scene have the feel of a Merry Pranksters-style hippie cult, and their shared values and sense of community prove bracing in an age of Trumpian individualism. With members like Feist and Emily Haines back in the fold for the band’s first album in seven years, every song is big, anthemic and emotionally invigorating, with the jazzy breakbeats in the rhythm section keeping them endearingly dog-eared rather than pompous.

Sometimes all this bluster is needed to paper over middling songcraft and rudderless segues, but for the most part the writing is on point: Vanity Pail Kids rides into battle with dive-bombing saxes and a huge tom-tom tattoo; Halfway Home channels Bruce Springsteen’s interstate energy; and Feist gives the title track the kind of wistfulness that avoids twee. The way Haines squeezes extra bars from her chorus on Protest Song, meanwhile, cajoling it into the next verse, typifies the band’s ramshackle invention.

Drowned In Sound 70

As much as it was undoubtedly cheering to hear that the collective - with all the original members in tow - had reassembled in the studio, you could be forgiven for being a bit wary given the often patchy history of bands reforming. So often these are the records that are most depressingly disappointing. Then again, although it's been seven long years since Forgiveness Rock Record the high standard of both the DMST and Feist releases were nothing if not encouraging, both singularly and as a possible hint at the form that BSS might be enjoying.

Happily, Hug of Thunder is far from a letdown, as the lead single 'Halfway Home' will attest. Granted, it’s almost BSS by numbers. But from the opening screech to the shared male/female vocals, through to the excitable ramshackle builds that reach for collective euphoria - not to mention the requisite horns - it’s simply a band doing what they do best. Whereas it may not have offered any surprises, the following single did. The Feist led title track strips back all the over-excitement in exchange for groove. It’s a lush marriage of deep minimal percussion, a sultry bass line, and her velvety, punctuating vocal that eventually opens up into a gorgeously soaring chorus. Lyrically it feels like her ode to the band that has been a mainstay for them all for many years now: “I had to survive it by the soundtrack made of our short lives." And the line “Speaking like a hug of thunder” could be a euphemism for their sound.

The most striking thing about Hug of Thunder is quite how energised the band sound. There’s a palpable sense that they’re thrilled to making music together again, and in turn, it makes for an infectious listen. It’s difficult not to get swept up by the clattering enthusiasm of ‘Protest Song,’ or the driving rhythm and call out chorus of ‘Vanity Pail Kids,’ and ‘Skyline’s bittersweet sentiments and jangly guitars demonstrate BSS’s gift for romanticising wistful regret so satisfyingly. The slightly mournful elements that often pepper their music give credence to their more exultant sensibilities, as on 'Gonna Get Better’s charmingly unconvincing refrain, “Things’ll get better, cuz they can’t get worse.”

At times the record does dip, as some tracks don’t seize your attention quite as strongly as they might. But all-in-all, BSS have made an album that trumps any cynicism that they may have faced, and in the process Hug of Thunder is as hearteningly unguarded and positive a record as you are likely to hear this year. Collectives by their very nature are a difficult entity to maintain - especially give the members' other successful projects outside of the band - so it’s even more inspiring that this group of musicians have pulled off a record of such quality after all these years. As Feist sings, “Certain times in our lives come to take up more space than others,” and happily, at this moment, the space they all afforded to Broken Social Scene was worth it.

The Guardian 60

(City Slang)

With its rotating line-up and varied back catalogue, fans could never be sure which version of Broken Social Scene would turn up on a new album, seven years after their last. Fifteen strong, with Leslie Feist and Emily Haines back on board, this Scene have come mob-handed; a cavalry arriving, with guitars, to combat these worsening times. The Toronto indie rock institution’s multifaceted jams reflect this headcount – Hug of Thunder is not hugely cogent – but equally benefit from the weight of numbers. You can really feel the force on Vanity Pail Kids, when you wonder whether Arcade Fire owe BSS a thing or two. The beguiling title track, by contrast, is just Feist, doing Feist.