My love of Broken Social Scene peaked between 2006 and 2008. That may sound like a very negative sentence, but it's not - the peak was very high and tail following it remains quite substantial. I still have a lot of time for Broken Social Scene. A brief summary of events goes like this - I heard Ibi Dreams of Pavement on a mixtape from a friend, saw BSS play an incredible set at Pukkelpop festival, bought their self titled album and it's predessor, You Forgot It In People, became obsessed with songs like It's All Gonna Break and Anthem For a Seventeen Year-Old Girl, saw BSS again at All Tomorrow's Parties and was convinced they were one of the greatest bands about.
That was the peak. Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning released some interesting but not excellent solo albums, I saw them play a couple more shows that could never quite live up to the excellent memories I had of them the first two times and they released Forgiveness Rock Record, an album that never quite hits the heights of the two before it. (A brief note on the gigs, I later received the mp3s of their ATP set and it was as good as I remembered - I hadn't just blown these events out of proportion in my mind.) The decline shouldn't be considered to be too horrendous; they were riding very high and what came after wasn't bad at all, it just couldn't compare.
Forgiveness Rock Record has then become the BSS record I turn to least often. It has it's moments - the opener World Sick is a huge song and the instrumental track, Meet Me in the Basement, is up their among some of my favourite instrument songs - it's brilliantly uplifting in the same way that Rival Schools' Hooligans For Life was. Art House Director and Water in Hell are pretty good too. However, for me, too many of the songs just fade into the background.
They've done a pretty lovely job on the packaging here too - gatefold sleeve, picture sleeves for the record. My main memory of the album, however, is that I bought it on the same day I went to see Boredoms play their 9-drum Boadrum show in The Forum, which was unfathomably mesmerising. I went with my friend Rich, who was also a big fan of BSS (having first seen them at Pukkelpop too). Before the show we were both pretty excited about this LP, but afterwards all we could talk about was Boredoms blowing our minds apart.
Format: Double 12", gatefold sleeve, picture sleeves
Tracks: 14
Cost: £15 new
Bought: Sister Ray
When: 11/05/10
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code
