![]() The band’s return in 2017 feels, if not momentous, at least extremely welcome. Fortunately, the stuff BSS is selling–ambitious, unabashed hymns to the transcendent powers of love, community, sex, and rock’n’roll–has only gotten rarer in the years since their last outing. And if you’re a fan of the band, you pretty much already know what you’re getting into. ![]() Like Forgiveness Rock Record before it, Hug of Thunder and its songs may as well have been named with a Broken Social Scene title generator. Rather than engaging in a unified assault, the band leans back to afford each other some space, filling the gaps between Engle’s lines with delirious melodies that lend the tune an uncharacteristic lightheartedness. (Engle’s lilting voice fits the band’s languid atmosphere so naturally that you’d be forgiven for failing to realize she’s a brand new member.) The song’s breezy beginning recalls Marty Paich and Antonio Carlos Jobim’s bossa nova arrangements for Astrud Gilberto, and BSS’s own Brazilian-leaning instrumental “Pacific Theme.” After that, “Stay Happy” is sprightly and syncopated–funky, even. ![]() And it’s just after its huge opening triumvirate that Hug of Thunder reveals its true character in “Stay Happy,” a comparatively restrained composition featuring Ariel Engle on vocals. Many of the most affecting moments in their catalog, however, are quieter. With the exception of their understated and mostly instrumental 2001 debut Feel Good Lost, Broken Social Scene have always been a bombastic band, a tendency they fully embraced on 2010’s Forgiveness Rock Record. It’s exhilarating, but it’s a lot to take in. After a brief ambient introduction, it’s one anthem after another: “Halfway Home,” a superconnected slab of feeling from de facto bandleader Kevin Drew, with too many guitar tracks to count “Protest Song,” an Emily Haines number that makes up for its decidedly non-polemical lyrics with a martial snare drum crescendo that might convince you to join BSS’s revolution even if you don’t know what it’s about and “Skyline,” whose cyclical structure gives it the feeling of a long, triumphant coda to the two songs that came before. For the first several songs on their warm and rewarding comeback album Hug of Thunder, it often sounds as though every member of the familial Toronto ensemble is playing at the same time. ![]() Seven years after their previous album, and a decade and half removed from the record that earned their spot in the canon of 2000s indie, Broken Social Scene are back–all 15 of them. ![]()
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