(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, or every song is stout,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, and but for the most fragment the writing is on point: Vanity Pail Kids rides into battle with dive-bombing saxes and a huge tom-tom tattoo; Halfway domestic channels Bruce Springsteen’s interstate energy; and Feist gives the title track the kind of wistfulness that avoids twee. The way Haines squeezes additional bars from her chorus on Protest Song,meanwhile, cajoling it into the next verse, and typifies the band’s ramshackle invention.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com