Most kids join rock ’n’ roll bands to get away from family. A new breed of Toronto, ON cutting-edge songwriters has flipped that ethic on its head. It’s rock band as extended clan, with a formally loose but emotionally tight core of musical kin known throughout indie rock as Broken Social Scene.
In 2001, Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning formed the hard core of what would become an internationally acclaimed crew of songwriters. Nobody would accuse these intense players of making “casual” music, but their model is. Broken Social Scene is out to fix what punk couldn’t: reject the separate, self-contained band unit as hopelessly corporate, in favour of music on a human scale.
Band-as-family deepens the emotional communication. Here, kitchen-sink democracy rules; the Song replaces the Star. And you must be doing something right when you can call on alternative-pop sirens Leslie Feist and Emily Haines to drop by with a cup of harmonies.
So they come and go as the song ideas dictate—rather than the lawyers—merging and spinning off into projects as diverse and critically adored as Metric, Apostle of Hustle, Raising the Fawn and Do Make Say Think. The new model works. It has come to represent something archetypically Canadian to the world—and to Canada.
Several years later, another spin-off called Valley of the Giants brings us to Montréal, QC—where the collective intersects with another collective. Violinist Sophie Trudeau is on loan from indie orchestra Godspeed You! Black Emperor; its many offshoots include A Silver Mt. Zion. Meanwhile, across the street, a celebrated young alt-pop group named Wolf Parade takes the example. Singer Spencer Krug forms Sunset Rubdown in his four minutes of downtime, and can’t help but form a third group, Swan Lake, which reaches its tentacles to Vancouver, BC for members Carey Mercer (Frog Eyes) and Dan Bejar (Destroyer).
It’s good, it’s nationwide. Why? As Leslie Feist has said, “Because the family tree is made of golden titanium and can’t be trimmed back.” It’s a Canadian philosophy. Us-against-them? No. We are the world. www.arts-crafts.ca www.listentofeist.com www.emilyhaines.com www.jagjaguwar.com/home.php
