Written by After completing the promotional run for their last album, 2017’s Hug of Thunder, Broken Social Scene locked into a years-long nostalgia circuit. The Toronto collective celebrated the 20th anniversary of You Forgot It in People with an extended tour, a Record Store Day reissue, a collection of covers by the younger generation they influenced, a graphic novel reimagining the LP, and a live album recorded in 2003; then came a broader compilation of B-sides and rarities, and a full-blown documentary about the band’s early years. Despite saturating themselves in the past, Broken Social Scene never bothered with the pervasive question that can plague artists in the aftermath of triumph: How do we recapture that sound and success?
Instead, they cobbled together a studio in the pastoral village of Warkworth, Ontario, whose local goods—honored with dedicated festivals: maple syrup, lilacs, the “perfect pie”—sound like the ingredients that comprise the band. Broken Social Scene used friendship and honesty as musical lightning rods, watching weeks morph into months as their expansive lineup rotated through the doors, and they chiseled out Remember the Humans, their first album in nine years.
No score yet, be the first to add.
Although its title is a play on You Forgot It in People, Remember the Humans is far from a reprisal. Broken Social Scene turned their amps louder with each consecutive album until the more restrained Hug of Thunder, and they continue to temper the volume on Remember the Humans. They don’t outright return to their instrumental post-rock roots, but they do entertain those impulses, jamming on lackadaisical indie rock until it’s billowy and cushioned. For a band that used to holler wildly and drown in guitar, they sound sober this go-around. Don’t let that fool you, though; this is still quintessential Broken Social Scene—brokenhearted love songs, striking images set in dream logic, longing for connection while admitting the faults that prevent it—even if it necessitates a new level of patient listening.
If Broken Social Scene wanted to play it safe, they wouldn’t have cut a new song featuring Metric’s Emily Haines and Stars’ Amy Millan from the tracklist—a difficult choice that bandleader Kevin Drew made to better suit the overall album. Maintaining a consistent musical mood is essential, hence why Remember the Humans opens the way every Broken Social Scene album does: with a flutter of instruments that swirl together to gently approach the listener. “Not Around Anymore” segues from that shimmer of flute, trombone, and flugelhorn into a triumphant swell of guitars and saxophone; Drew is weighed down grieving his mother and a crumbling society, but in the intertwined hands of his bandmates, their music lifts him upright again.
“Not Around Anymore” embodies the album’s recurring themes: extended jams, rich instrumentation, and refined epiphanies. Combined, those key elements make for a smooth, borderline sultry listen compared to the immediacy of the band’s former pop hooks. “And I Think of You” spins ’80s elevator pastiche with another bright saxophone melody, congas, and clarinet. “This Briefest Kiss,” originally a nine-minute track, approaches R&B territory thanks to Brendan Canning’s languid bassline and Ariel Engle’s soulful vocal performance. The album is filled with stretches of meditative stillness, despite the quantity of musicians playing at once—like when Jill Harris’ faint falsettos and a sprinkle of piano notes in “Life Within the Ground” patter like droplets on glass. To mistake these songs’ softer palettes for monotony would be to overlook the beauty of each panorama.
Reuniting with producer David Newfeld, who helmed You Forgot It in People and Broken Social Scene, the band casually works in bold flourishes. Andrew Whiteman’s briny string plucks of a Cuban tres punch up “Mission Accomplished (Kingfisher)” before he claims lead vocal duties on “The Call,” where searing harmonies with Harris mirror the song’s cheerful horns. The album’s most immediate mood-boosters, “Relief” and “Paying for Your Love,” pass the reins to drummer Justin Peroff, who propels both tracks into the kind of jubilant catharses that Broken Social Scene made their name on years ago. Tiny asides from the studio remain in the mix—“Go for it,” “I’m into it,” “Can I have a little more of that click?”—to ground their human-sized selves while those expansive emotions orbit in the stratosphere.
Remember the Humans plays like an update to one of Drew’s old refrains: “You all want the lovely music to save your lives.” One of the album’s highlights, “Only the Good I Keep,” arrives primarily in the hands of the band’s newest contributor, Hannah Georgas. When she was nominated as Canada’s best new artist and songwriter in 2011, Broken Social Scene were already over a decade in. Yet she’s perfectly in tune with her new bandmates and their sentiments in this song, admitting to longing for musical salvation, turning to Smashing Pumpkins’ radio singles and Julie Doiron’s Heart and Crime for comfort while carpooling with friends and drinking party punch. But the wisdom of age asserts itself in these songs, too—the knowledge that saving your own life requires much more than listening to music for guidance. Now staring down 50 with a gray beard and the awareness that he’s an “empath narcissist,” Drew makes himself clearer this go-around: Music can lift you from a bad spot, but in-person relationships, romantic or platonic, are the true life-saving elixir. “To understand/What I didn’t know then/Would be taking a hand/Up until the end,” he harmonizes with Lisa Lobsinger in “Relief.” “What a relief/To finally feel/To finally be.”
Individual songs have never fully captured the allure of Broken Social Scene—not even if they come in memeified form with a Meryl Streep co-sign. Remember the Humans is particularly meant to be experienced in full, as its songs often sound in conversation with each other—an amorphous circle of friends confessing their struggles and lending support. Feist, Broken Social Scene’s first breakout star, returns for “What Happens Now,” a bittersweet song that looks back while attempting to move forward. “I’m becoming what I gave away,” she sings. “I just died and I’m still in love with life/All our lives spent together.” It feels like an echo of lyrics Whiteman sings a few songs earlier: “Keep up! Keep up! Because we are what we are stripped down to… Either restless or reborn, we’re going.” Threaded into this record is that commitment to carry on, to remain steadfast friends, to feel openly and expansively. Even after a nearly decade-long wait, Remember the Humans feels fated, like an inevitability.
