State of the Confederation: Toronto Is a Broken Social Scene

Posted on Jul 15th 2009 9:00AM by Jonathan Dekel
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To mark the launch of Spinner Canada, we're doing an in-depth series on the Canadian indie music scene that has taken the world by storm in recent years. In Part I, we explored the foundation laid for Canada's music scene in the 1980s and '90s. This week, we examine this decade's explosion, beginning with Toronto and continuing in Montreal. Then, Part III will look towards the next wave.

Canadian indie music was a fledgling concern at the turn of the century, forcing bands like Metric and the Stills to leave their native land. But the postmillennial rise of music blogs and file-sharing suddenly allowed smaller-market bands to reach big audiences.

This was best exemplified by the Canada's indie rock collectives: Vancouver's New Pornographers, Toronto's Broken Social Scene and Montreal's Arcade Fire. Though the Pornos broke through first, it was BSS and Arcade Fire -- with their sprawling offshoots, side-projects and associated artists -- that truly took Canadian indie music to the world.

Superconnected

Begun as a collaboration between young indie scenester Kevin Drew and grizzled Can-Rock veteran Brendan Canning, Broken Social Scene quickly grew in size and sonic range, creating a perfect storm of well-connected and combustible personalities ...

"I knew Kevin from around town," recalls Canning. "He hadn't come from the world of playing gigs, whereas I had already been part of four bands [hHead, Spooky Reuben, By Divine Right and Len], which were all failed shots at the title. So for me, Broken Social Scene was an opportunity to do something that had nothing to do with my past, something that, ultimately, was much more sincere."

Bonding over their shared love of post-rock bands like Montreal's Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Canning and Drew released a 2001 collection of ambient tunes titled 'Feel Good Lost' -- which featured several of their musically inclined friends -- on small local label Noise Factory Records.

"After Kevin and I had recorded our parts, we played it for everyone," says Canning. "Feist was living down the street. I called her up one night and she came in to do vocals really late, like 1AM. She had never met Kevin before, but on the By Divine Right tour, Kevin had made me a mixtape with a couple of KC Accidental songs on it, so when she heard Emily [Haines] singing, her ears perked up with recognition. Leslie knew Emily from an open mic night she used to throw and I had met Emily in New York when I was there with By Divine Right."

"It was so natural the way things happened," says Metric's Haines. "I auditioned to get into the Etobicoke School of the Arts, was accepted in Grade 11 -- when I was 15 -- and that was the same year that Kevin Drew and [Stars'] Amy Millan started attending. The way that we kept those friendships alive was through Broken Social Scene. Whenever we had a spare five minutes we would go hang out with Kevin, drink a beer and jam in his basement."

As they took their bedroom recording to the stage, Canning and Drew ditched the 'Feel Good Lost' material for new songs that often featured up to a dozen members at a time. These onstage jams would be the basis for the band's second album, 'You Forgot It in People,' which applied a post-rock mentality and indie aesthetic to accessible pop structures.

"'You Forgot It in People' seemed like this culmination of everything that was going on in Toronto," says Broken Social Scene biographer Stuart Berman, who notes they built up a wave of buzz that came to a head at Austin's South by Southwest music festival in 2003.

"The SXSW gig was the watershed moment for us," Canning remembers. "We were definitely one of the 'hype' bands coming in because Pitchfork gave us a 9.2 rating -- I had never heard of Pitchfork before."

As the band gained popularity elsewhere, the Toronto media raised Canning and Drew to levels of local heroes.

"If you're in Toronto, it's like Kevin Drew's got the keys to the city," says the Stills guitarist and BSS' Arts and Crafts labelmate Dave Hamelin. "He's walking into people's apartments, making drinks and talking to them and helping them with their problems. Leaving them a tip and then walking out."

"It was the first time that people we knew were getting written about in big magazines like Rolling Stone," Berman recalls, "and even though you wanna say, 'Who cares about Rolling Stone, Spin or the NME?' it's like winning a Juno or an Oscar. Deep down you know you want to win."

Eventually, the inevitable backlash that comes with commercial success and media saturation began. Some offshoots began releasing their own successful albums and slowly the all-for-one mentality that had brought BSS to such great heights started eroding.

"Broken Social Scene is the new establishment to some people," Berman explains. "That was a factor of online media flourishing, along with weeklies who were writing about them. Daily papers were hiring younger writers to appeal to younger audiences, and they were writing about BSS too. You can see how some people got sick of it."

But if Toronto was becoming cynical about BSS' success, just down the 401 freeway another collective was about to scale greater heights than Broken Social Scene could even conceive of.

"Arcade Fire had opened up for us in Montreal for one gig," Canning says, "and I remember Kevin going gaga for them ..."