Broken Social Scene,<\/em> each record packed with ambient, amoebic expressions that sound like rare time capsules decades later. Listen now, and they still brim with the kind of heart-bruising magic that seems impossible to replicate again.<\/p>\n\n\tBut people are hard to let go of, and the band members have come back to one another multiple times since then, releasing 2010\u2019s Forgiveness Rock Record <\/em>and 2017\u2019s Hug of Thunder,<\/em> not to mention countless collaborations on other side projects and EPs. Still, nothing has felt like a Broken Social Scene reunion quite like Remember the Humans,<\/em> their first LP in nine years, and one that connects them with David Newfeld, the producer behind You Forgot It in People<\/em> and Broken Social Scene,<\/em> for the first time in more than 20 years.<\/p>\n\n\tA lot of the project comes directly from looking back and seeing what an impact those records made. You Forgot It in People<\/em> turned 20 during the quarantine, inviting fans to revisit what those songs meant to them, and inspiring the band members to get back into one another\u2019s orbit. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t supposed to be nine years,\u201d founding member Kevin Drew tells Rolling Stone <\/em>on a recent call. \u201cI think what we went through with the pandemic and just sort of slowly climbing back and getting out there and honoring You Forgot It In People,<\/em> it brought Newfeld back into our realm.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\tRemember the Humans <\/em>also reeled in members who haven\u2019t been in the fold in a while. Feist and Hannah Georgas both appear on the LP, as does Lisa Lobsinger, who had been part of songs like 2010\u2019s \u201cTexico Bitches\u201d and \u201cAll to All.\u201d \u201cLisa was gone for a while, and she returned with a song that she wrote thinking it was a Broken Social Scene song during a meditation one night. She wrote us a letter,\u201d Drew recalls. \u201cIt was undeniable to all of us that that was a song we wanted to put on this record, because we wanted Lisa back. We wanted her back in our lives. And we wanted to let her know that she\u2019s always welcome, always.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n \t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n
\n\tThat\u2019s what makes the album feel like a huge, longstanding house party starting up again \u2014 everyone familiar with the layout and eager to reconnect. Songs like \u201cThe Call\u201d and \u201cNot Around Anymore\u201d are swelling, orchestral arrangements full of sounds and people. And yet there\u2019s also a deep sadness to the record: Despite the ability to return to one another after so much time, nothing is completely the same. Grief comes up repeatedly \u2014\u00a0 Drew and Newfeld were both grappling with the deaths of their mothers around the same time, but the album also deals with broader ideas of loss and nostalgia and moving on. \u201cYou\u2019re alive. You\u2019re in your fifties. You\u2019re dealing with a lot of grief because people are going,\u201d Drew says. \u201cThere\u2019s also people who are alive in your life who have chosen the bottle, chosen the drugs, chosen a victimized culture, chosen the idea to be born again without really truly understanding who they were in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tKevin Drew (Visual) + Jordan Allen (Layout)\/Broken Social Scene*<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\tAnd then there were the bigger, macro anxieties about our current era. Remember the Humans<\/em> touches on ideas around AI and technology, and what it means in terms of human relationships and creativity. (The lyrics to the album\u2019s first single, \u201cNot Around Anymore,\u201d go: \u201cTh\u0435re\u2019s no need to cry here anymore\/To reach outside here anymore\/To redefine here anymore\/\u2019Cause it\u2019s all gone away\/Guess it\u2019s called the times.\u201d) The discussion came up a lot in sessions between the musicians as they were putting the album together. \u201cIf we look at what we were saying back in 2002 with You Forgot It in People<\/em>, then today\u2019s AI version of that record would be called Remember the Humans,<\/em>\u201d <\/em>Drew says. \u201cIt\u2019s very, very, very easy to go into a conversation about communication and information and how we\u2019re all defensive and how we\u2019re all reactive and how the idea of understanding is not really part of our social culture anymore. So [the title] became a slogan for \u2018We are still here, and the bear hug actually still does exist.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n \t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n
\n\tStill, bringing all these ideas together wasn\u2019t always easy. With a band as big as Broken Social Scene, there\u2019s always some level of compromise and give and take, no matter how utopian and connected they might sound. \u201cI suppose there was a reluctance in our return because we all know we\u2019re about to go into the world of compromise and the world where you can\u2019t control,\u201d Drew says. \u201cAnd this band teaches you so much in the idea that if you\u2019re controlling things in life, you\u2019re not living. But it\u2019s difficult because we have so much time in our own lives where we get to control them. We don\u2019t have to compromise. When you come back with Social Scene, you can\u2019t do that. You have to allow for other people\u2019s instincts.\u201d Over and over, that\u2019s what\u2019s worked about the band. The musicians were reminded of this constantly while working together and thinking of the alchemy that has brought them here.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWhen you were a kid, you longed to feel the pain,\u201d Drew says. \u201cYou wanted to know what you were seeing on the screen, what you\u2019re reading, what you are listening to. You wanted to know what that was. One of the things that keeps you real, in the aspect of that teenage heartbeat, is when you look back at things that you created, that people to this day still relate to. It means you captured a real, human moment.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThe songs are here to prove it, standing strong two decades later: \u201cAnthems for a Seventeen-Year\u2010Old Girl\u201d is a ubiquitous classic by now, sprinkled across TikTok and memes, and it\u2019s also been embraced as a song for reflection in the trans community, while \u201cLover\u2019s Spit\u201d has been immortalized in movie scenes and Lorde lyrics. Others, like \u201cAlmost Crimes\u201d or \u201cGuilty Cubicles,\u201d still echo deep-harbored emotions, even if some of them are wordless sketches. (Drew laughs recalling one memory: \u201cI remember standing side-stage with a gentleman from Wilco, in Spain at Primavera. We had 10,000 people in front of us, and he leaned into me and he said, \u2018Get ready, it\u2019s the greatest feeling in the world. You must love it when everyone sings your songs.\u2019 And I turned around and said, \u2018We kind of mutter a lot on our records.\u2019\u201d)\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n \t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n
\n\tRemember the Humans<\/em> is more direct and voluble, with fleshed-out lyrics, but it still speaks to a particular feeling, celebrating experience and the passing of time. Some of it hurts \u2014 so much of the album seems to question, \u201cWhat did we gain? What did we lose?\u201d \u201cThink of You,\u201d for example, grapples with the idea of moving on and letting go. \u201cEveryone sort of attributed it to my mother, which was not wrong,\u201d Drew remembers. \u201cBut it was also about the loss of just thinking about someone, someone in your life that you couldn\u2019t have been with, someone in life that hurt you. And I found myself just sort of referencing simplicities within the aspect of thinking of someone and ruminating over lost love. And that\u2019s what all the songs are, the things that you think you\u2019re over, but you\u2019re never over them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\tBy the end of the album, everyone might admit they\u2019re a little broken and the worse for wear, but in that beautiful way that only comes from living. That\u2019s a quiet feeling Broken Social Scene embraced from the beginning, and an ethos that hasn\u2019t changed at all, no matter how much time goes by. That\u2019s something they\u2019ll keep giving their fans. \u201cYou have an absolute responsibility to the listener to try to make the most beautiful, adventurous music possible,\u201d Drew says. \u201cWhen you do that, even in the tiniest of ripples, it can help them keep going.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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