Broken Social Scene albums have always felt like huge, spontaneous gatherings of friends living in the moment and following each other – because that’s exactly what they are. Since 1999, the Canadian band has been coming together in changing line-ups, sometimes six, sometimes almost twenty musicians at once, more of a loose collective than a formal group. This resulted in works such as the debut “Feel Good Lost” from 2001, “You Forgot It in People” from 2002 and the self-titled “Broken Social Scene” from 2005 – each record packed with ambient, amoeba-like sound worlds that still seem like rare time capsules decades later. Anyone who listens to it today still feels that heartbreaking magic that seems impossible to repeat.
But you don’t let go of people that easily, and the band members have gotten together several times since then: “Forgiveness Rock Record” was released in 2010, “Hug of Thunder” in 2017, not to mention countless collaborations on side projects and EPs. Still, no reunion has felt as much like a true Broken Social Scene reunion as “Remember the Humans” – the first album in nine years that reunites her with David Newfeld, the producer behind “You Forgot It in People” and “Broken Social Scene” for the first time in more than two decades.
A large part of the project comes from looking back and realizing what impression these records left. “You Forgot It in People” turned twenty during quarantine—inviting fans to relive what these songs mean to them and getting the band members to reconnect. “It wasn’t supposed to be nine years,” says founding member Kevin Drew in an interview with ROLLING STONE. “I think what we went through with the pandemic, and then this slow fight back and going out and honoring ‘You Forgot It in People’ – that’s what brought Newfeld back into our world.”
Old friends return
“Remember the Humans” also brought members back into the fold who had been left out for a while. Feist and Hannah Georgas are featured on the album, as is Lisa Lobsinger, who was already there on songs like “Texico Bitches” and “All to All” from 2010. “Lisa was gone for a while, and then she came back with a song that she had written during a meditation one evening – feeling like it was a Broken Social Scene song. She wrote us a letter,” Drew remembers. “It was undeniable to all of us that we wanted this song on the record because we wanted Lisa back. We wanted her back in our lives. And we wanted to show her that she is always welcome. Always.”
That’s exactly what makes the album feel like a huge, long-running house party that’s starting up again – everyone knows the rooms, everyone is looking forward to seeing each other again. Songs like “The Call” and “Not Around Anymore” are swelling, orchestral arrangements full of sounds and people. And yet the record carries a deep sadness within it: despite the ability to find each other again after such a long time, nothing is quite the same anymore. Grief runs through the entire album – Drew and Newfeld were both dealing with the deaths of their mothers around the same time, but the album also deals with overarching ideas about loss, nostalgia and moving on. “You’re alive. You’re in your 50s. You’re carrying a lot of grief because people are leaving,” Drew says. “And then there are people in your life who chose the bottle, the drugs, the victim culture, the idea of being reborn without really understanding who they even were.”
Added to this were the larger, macroscopic fears of our time. “Remember the Humans” touches on topics surrounding AI and technology and what that means for human relationships and creativity. (The lyrics of the first single “Not Around Anymore” are: “There’s no need to cry here anymore / To reach outside here anymore / To redefine here anymore / ‘Cause it’s all gone away / Guess it’s called the times.”) In the sessions, the musicians discussed these questions again and again as they put the album together. “If we look at what we said with ‘You Forgot It in People’ in 2002, the AI version of that record today would be called ‘Remember the Humans,'” says Drew. “It’s really, really easy to slip into a conversation about communication and information, about how we’re all on the defensive, how we’re all knee-jerk reactions, and how understanding each other is actually no longer a part of our social culture. So the title became the slogan for: ‘We’re still here, and the real hug still exists.'”
Collective compromises
Still, it wasn’t always easy to bring all of these ideas together. With a band the size of Broken Social Scene, there is always a certain level of compromise and mutual giving in, no matter how utopian and connected they may sound. “I think there was some reluctance to come back because we all know we’re about to enter the world of compromise, the world of giving up control,” says Drew. “And this band teaches you so much about how you’re not really living if you control everything. But it’s difficult because we have so much time in our own lives where we’re in control. We don’t have to compromise. When you come back to Social Scene, you can’t do that. You have to give space to other people’s instincts.” This is exactly what the band has done time and time again. The musicians were constantly reminded of this as they worked together and reflected on the alchemy that got them here.
“When you were a kid, you craved pain,” Drew says. “You wanted to know what you saw on the screen, what you read, what you heard. You wanted to understand what it was. One of the things that keeps you grounded, in the sense of that youthful heartbeat, is the moment when you look back at things you created that people still feel a connection to today. That means you captured a real, human moment.”
The songs prove it, still going strong two decades later: “Anthems for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl” has long been a ubiquitous classic, spread on TikTok and in memes, and has also been adopted by the trans community as a song of reflection, while “Lover’s Spit” has been immortalized in film scenes and Lorde lyrics. Others, like “Almost Crimes” and “Guilty Cubicles,” still resonate with deep-rooted feelings, even if some of them are wordless sketches. (Drew laughs at a memory: “I remember standing on the side of the stage at Primavera in Spain with a gentleman from Wilco. There were 10,000 people in front of us, and he leaned over to me and said, ‘Get ready, it’s the best feeling in the world. You sure love it when everyone sings along to your songs.’ And I turned around and said, ‘We actually mumble quite a bit on our records.'”)
Pain and beauty of life
“Remember the Humans” is more direct and eloquent, with well-developed lyrics – and yet still speaks to a very specific feeling, celebrating experience and the passage of time. Some of it hurts – much of the album seems to ask, “What have we gained? What have we lost?” “Think of You,” for example, wrestles with the idea of letting go and moving on. “Everyone kind of attributed it to my mom, which wasn’t wrong,” Drew remembers. “But it was also about the loss, just thinking about someone – someone in your life that you couldn’t be with, someone who hurt you. And I realized I was just referring to simplicity, to thinking about someone and ruminating on lost love. And that’s what all these songs are: the things you think you’ve overcome – but you never really get over them.”
By the end of the album, everyone may admit to being a little broken and battered – but in that beautiful way that only life itself brings. This quiet feeling has accompanied Broken Social Scene from the beginning, and nothing has changed, no matter how much time passes. They will pass this on to their fans. “You have an absolute responsibility to the listener to make the most beautiful, adventurous music possible,” says Drew. “If you can do that, even in the smallest waves, it can help keep them going.”
