Recommendations of the Editorial team
Canadian indie rock icons Broken Social Scene are returning this spring, and not a moment too soon. The multi-piece Toronto band announced today that their sixth studio album, Remember The Humans, will be released on May 8th on their own label Arts and Crafts will appear.
It’s their first full-length album in nearly a decade, and if first single “Not Around Anymore” is anything to go by, it’ll offer plenty of the woozy confidence and chaotic joy that Broken Social Scene do better than anyone.
The credits for “Remember the Humans” show that this album features many familiar faces from the extended BSS universe, including vocalist Kevin Drew, guitarists/multi-instrumentalists Charles Spearin, Brendan Canning, Sam Goldberg, Andrew Whiteman and Jimmy Shaw, drummer Justin Peroff, trombonist Evan Cranley and many more, as well as vocal contributions from Feist, Amy Millan, Lisa Lobsinger, Ariel Engle and Hannah Georgas. In other words, it’s a real Broken Social Scene reunion.
Broken Social Scene are finally working with David Newfeld again
The name that will attract the most attention from longtime fans is that of producer David Newfeld, who was instrumental in the studio alchemy that resulted in the band’s two best albums, 2002’s You Forgot It in People and 2005’s Broken Social Scene. This is great news for anyone who appreciates the over-the-top, irrepressible, transcendent rock sound that Broken Social Scene pioneered in the 2000s the management of Newfeld.
A press release accompanying the announcement states that Newfeld and Drew recently reconnected after many years of no contact and that both lost their mothers while working on “Remember the Humans.”
The producer is quoted as saying, “Our mothers would have wanted us to do this and do it right after 20 years of not working together.”
Broken Social Scene haven’t released an album since 2017’s Hug of Thunder; their most recent project was two EPs from 2019. When those EPs came out, Drew told Rolling Stone that he already had new music in mind: “There’s a next album. There’s a mission: to tone things down a little and go back to the roots where it all started.” Seven years later, this now appears to be becoming a reality.
The band has also announced a summer tour with close-knit bands Metric and Stars. The “All the Feelings Tour,” which promises to be “a celebration of the lifelong friendship and creative community between the Toronto legends,” begins in early June in Austin, Texas, and ends two months later in their native Ontario.
