Broken Social Scene
“It’s a nice day,” Kevin Drew said, sprawled out lazily in the back of the Broken Social Scene tour bus. “There’s a tattoo convention or something going on this weekend, lots of tattoo people walking around,” he clicked his tongue suggestively, “looking good, sun shining.” He was feeling under the weather and was nursing himself back to health, sipping from a mug and caressing a “get well spoon” purchased from the farmer’s market earlier that day.
“Do you have any tattoos?” I asked as I came up with a new game plan. ‘Time to improvise,’ I thought, striking off me prepared questions that not longer applied.
“Yeah I do, but we’ll skip those. They’re personal tattoos,” he responded coyly.
Of course there’s no shortage of conversation fodder when it comes to Broken Social Scene, and virtually every band member is involved in enough projects to fill an interview twice over. But where exactly to start? I flashed back to the first time I had heard of the band. An anonymous American on the internet was telling me that You Forgot It in People was the best album of the year. I think it was the first time I was ever conscious of a Canadian band having…for lack of a better phrase, “indie creed”. Before Arcade Fire and the explosion of the Montreal music scene, this large in numbers yet relatively unknown band had grown out of the post rock world and produced one of the most surprising ambitious, and dense rock albums in recent memory.
In the years since, the band has released two more albums to critical success, as well as two “Broken Social Scene Presents…” albums featuring solo works of band members. The group has scored seven feature files, including 2010’s It’s Kind of a Funny Story and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. And that’s not their only involvement in cinema. Drew has directed a short film, starring friends Cillian Murphy and Leslie Feist, called “The Water”, based on a Feist song of the same name (“Make sure you see the 13 minute version,” he warned). The band has also been featured extensively in the 2010 feature length film This Movie Is Broken, from Canadian director Bruce MacDonald. Blending a fictional love story with a real concert film, the movie bills itself as “a rock show romance”.
“We had know Bruce for a long time,” Drew began. “He’d been an avid support of our band and bands surrounding us for quite some time, and he always wanted to find a way to capture us live.” MacDonald had planned to shoot BSS performing on Toronto island, but this was the summer of 2009, and the Toronto workers strike had shut down ferry service, thus cancelling the show. To make it up to their fans, the band decided to give a free concert on the harbour front. “Bruce was talking with Don McKellar and they said, ‘Why don’t we make it a little bit of a mini movie?’ At that point it was our band that we had been touring with for a couple years. None of the other people were going to around. And slowly throughout the week coming up to the show everyone was around.”
By “everyone”, Drew means the many former band members who have left to focus on other projects, including member os Stars, Metric and Feist herself. You might even say it was a BSS All-Stars event, something Drew implied was just a happy accident. In fact, due to the “super group” nature of the band, with so many members working on so many different projects, their lineup has been anything but stable throughout the years. Drew sees this as natural. “I know the people in my life love playing music and not just one kind of it. I know they love to have all different kinds of outlets. And sometimes you bring it and you make it public and other times you just do it for yourself. I have stacks of recordings.”
Still with five years between actual Broken Social Scene albums, members splitting off to record solo projects (Including Drew’s own Spirit If..), and an unpredictable touring attendance, speculation on the demise of the band has begun to simmer. Even Drew admits he fed fire to such gossip. “There were times when outside sources would say I cried wold a lot about breaking up. But there were times when that should have happened.”
Now, with the 2010 release of Forgiveness Rock Record, Drew seems confident that Broken Social Scene is here to stay, or at least until, as he put it “our kids decide that they should kick us off stage.” The album features guest appearances by most of the former members previously mentioned, and the touring lineup has one significant new addition, musician John McEntire of Tortoise and The Sea and Cake, bands that have been major influences on Broken Social Scene. The show that night would even feature an opening set from The Sea and Cake.
“I think this time around, we’ve been more of a band that we’ve ever been,” Drew said assuredly, while conceding, “no, we were not a band there for a while.” Despite his illness and fatigue, Drew’s mood seemed to brighten wen talking about their current dynamic. It seems as though their semi-hiatus has only strengthened the group bond. “We got sidetracked there, with the side projects and the other bands and the personal relationships, so once everything got on point again we had to do this record; we had to go out and we had to tour and we had to know what it was that we had. It’s very realistic what we have – we see it now. It’s a good thing because you don’t have the thoughts that race through your brain of ‘what ifs’ and what was it it going to be. So there’s a lot of personal power in knowing what it is, and we’re very, very grateful that we do.”
At other times while speaking to Drew, it was hard not to detect a hint of frustration with the state of the music industry. It would be unfair to read too much into his demeanour; he was of course fighting a bad bug. But he didn’t shy away from articulating such concerns. “As you get older you do become a bit of a skeptic – there’s just no way around it. I’d like to remain a positive skeptic though. I don’t want to be someone who’s negative about the scene because I think it’s great, but it’s all dying very rapidly. The music industry died and it went away. No one buys records anymore. Everyone just thinks they are entitled to free music. So then it turns to the live scene, but the live scene now is getting so over-saturated that the people can’t keep with it, and they don’t have the money to keep up with it. You’re going to see very shortly it will be no different than what happened with the record industry – there’s just going to be too much.”
But Drew merely sees himself as a realist, acknowledging the bad with the good. “If you look at the lyrics to this album it’s a very upbeat, happy record but there’s a lot of little tiny bits of cynicism or darkness in there… how can you not by cynical with all that’s going on right now?” The comment suggest an undercurrent of political angst. Broken Social Scene aren’t exactly an activist band, but they certainly don’t seem afraid to speak their mind. One of the best songs on Forgiveness record, a high energy tune called “Texico Bitches”, reads like a pointed condemnation of big oil. Drew hopes the live show can serve as an antidote, however small, to such frustrations.
We’re trying to bring a very realistic aspect of joy for those two hours to those people. Let it out, let it go , leave it here tonight…
“I don’t particularly see it as a wondering time right now,” he admitted. “I think we cruelly every day get sold that it’s not really going to work out much anymore…We’re trying to bring a very realistic aspect of joy for those two hours to those people. Let it out, let it go , leave it here tonight… I want them to leave elated and the next morning I want them to wake up and pass that on.”
We had talked for almost 20 minutes. I realized it was probably time to let the man rest up before the show, but I attempted to push my luck with just a few more questions. After all, we had talked so much about the past, and the present of Broken Social Scene, I wanted to get a glimpse into its future.
“Would you say you’re just living in the moment right now, or do you have a clear idea of which direction you’re heading in?” I asked.
Drew refused to reveal specifically what his future plans were, only saying, “ I know what I want to do. I always know. I always plan ahead. But it’s good to live in the moment. I think if you live in the moment with a responsibility to the moment then you’re doing it right, but if you live tin the moment thinking there is no consequences then you’re a fool… So I tell people to live in their responsible moment. That’s the way you get by.”
As I left the tour bus I wondering if Drew was going to be well enough to perform. A few hours later, the questions seemed absurd. On stage, he was a man in perfect health. Amidst the throngs of happy fans. I was convinced this was the greatest show they had ever performed. But maybe they just away play that well. Because it was just like he had described it to me “We overplay, we play for two hours, we never leave them wanting more and we leave them with everything we have.” And as the music reached its peak, Kevin Drew raised his glimmering get well spoon into the air.
