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Where YFIIP meticulously arranged the collective of instrumentation for precision, like a ballet, this self-titled album throws everything into a blender, almost completely overwhelming the pretty melodies underneath - but not quite.
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The disc is disjointed, lacks much in the way of cohesive musical character, and ultimately never really reaches to be anything more than a bunch of decent songs held together in the semblance of an album.
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This exercise in excess makes the ambitious You Forgot It in People seem positively understated by comparison.
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Like The Polyphonic Spree stripped of all their faux compound dwelling arse wittery, this is an unambiguous shot of serotonin straight to your head and heart.
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The 14-song set is as bright and moving as the band's previous efforts, but Broken Social Scene holds more charisma, more depth, and surely more complexities.
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But no matter how much I sit here listening to Broken Social Scene, and no matter how special most of these tracks are, they lack the cohesiveness that made You Forgot it in People, and even Feel Good Lost, something to get ecstatic about.
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Broken Social Scene builds on gentle nuances, compounding its effect incrementally with each track.
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This eponymous album mixes grunge, garage, classical, punk, prog and much else into an exuberant melange that sometimes feels as if several songs are going on at once.
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The group has lost some of the accessibility of You Forgot it in People, which wore its heart on its sleeve with fewer emotional contradictions, but has maintained the same emotional neediness at the previous album's heart.
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This album is alive.
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Though it loses its momentum in the final few tracks, and prevents me from giving it the downright slobbering it might otherwise deserve, Broken Social Scene, much like its release day partner, You Could Have it So Much Better..., is a cinder in the eye of all the indie-haters.
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Broken Social Scene has pulled off the rare feat of making a heavily produced record sound instinctive and spontaneous.
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Not so much a series of songs as it is a musical mood.
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Even a mellowed Broken Social Scene sports more energy and ideas than a dozen mainstream rock acts.
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In places, the group seems like they're being almost willfully difficult, and yet it often makes for darn good listening.
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Feels like being caught up in a creative whirlwind; every song at some point grants you the position of the fly on the wall - being privy to a group of people just chilling out, making music and living the good life.
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Under The RadarThis is the sound of things all falling apart, and few albums this year have sounded better. [#11, p.105]
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New Musical Express (NME)Absolutely stunning. [4 Feb 2006, p.29]
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MojoAn effervescent rush of melody, invention and magic. [Jan 2006, p.119]
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UncutThere's a real effort to forge beauty out of chaos without losing any of the chaos. [Album of the Month, Jan 2006, p.100]
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BlenderThe album's plush and detailed enough to invite extensive exploration, and varied enough to not get exhausting. [Oct 2005, p.135]
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Q MagazineWhat on paper might sound like a recipe for disaster in fact turns into a triumph. [Jan 2006, p.125]
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The record’s overwhelming scale cuts both ways. There are so many artists, voices and instruments begging to be heard that trimming is as much an injustice to the collective nature of the group as leaving in the excess is to the final product.
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FilterOne might be a bit startled by how much, well, more broken this new [album] sounds. [#17, p.92]
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SpinA multifaceted, densely layered sound. [Oct 2005, p.138]
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BillboardA richly textured collection of songs that further explore the possibilities of the group's grooving dream-pop blueprint but stays just weird enough not to attract the ear of mainstream radio.
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Cerebral listening.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 114 out of 133
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Mixed: 12 out of 133
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Negative: 7 out of 133
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danieljoOct 12, 2005
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DrewKOct 8, 2005Challenging and unsatisfying. Not a good combo. I'm tremendously disappointed in this album.
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Apr 17, 2014