Album Review: Broken Social Scene - Forgiveness Rock Record
Canadian collective Broken Social Scene return with their fourth studio album on the back of two outstanding releases in ‘You Forgot It in People’ (2002) and ‘Broken Social Scene’ (2005) so it was always going to be a difficult task to make another great record.
Five years in the making, ‘World Sick’ the opening track from the album begins and by the end of it those five years seems totally worth it. The world epic is one of the most over used and annoying words currently, but the only word that comes to mind when describing ‘World Sick’ is epic. At six minutes forty-nine seconds it is an epic opening track that reminds you of just how good Broken Social Scene can be.
One of the most impressive things about the record is the depth that it shows and the variation of songs that it boasts. Songs like ‘World Sick’ and ‘Ungrateful Little Father’ showing their ability to write longer more grand songs.
Further from that this album shows that Broken Social Scene can write really good pop songs with songs like ‘Art House Director’, ‘Texico Bitches’, ‘All to All’, ‘Chase Scene’ and ‘Forced To Love’ all strong candidates for singles.
Songs like ‘Sweetest Kill’, ‘Water in Hell’ and ‘Sentimental X’s’ are slightly softer but really show off the wonderful vocals of the various members of the band. Instrumental track ‘Meet Me in the Basement’ manages to keep you dancing, nodding, moving, humming etc for it’s entirety and is conformation of just how good Broken Social Scene be in any form of song writing.
Commonly with a lot of bands is that the more records they make the worse they get, you’ve only got to look at British examples like Bloc Party, Maximo Park, The Rakes, The Futureheads etc. However it appears North American bands get better with each release, LCD Soundsystem, The National, Spoon, Yo La Tengo come to mind. Broken Social Scene are a band who fit that mould and with the release of ‘Forgiveness Rock Record’ Broken Social Scene release an album totally on par with the previous two and possibly even better (time will tell).
9/10
