Kevin Drew is among his people. Parked in the front lounge of Dublin’s Temple Bar Music Centre, Drew, who steers a magical, freewheeling indie-pop revue called Broken Social Scene, is getting to know how it feels when the whole world loves you and wants to shake your hand.
Fanboys are pressing in from every side with the lead-limbed determination of b-movie zombies. If Drew wore robes – and from a certain angle, the bearded Canadian has a sort of slacker Jesus thing going on – people might be stroking his hem.
From the swell of admirers, a guy lurches forth, waving a big grey square. Oh, it’s a vinyl LP, a pristine pressing of Broken Social Scene’s penultimate album You Forgot It In People. He asks Drew to sign the record, the expression on his face very close to awe.
“No problem, man, no problem – see you later,” says Drew, watching the grateful fan slip back into the crush. Others surge forward to take his place. Some request autographs, all seem to be clutching vinyl copies of Your Forgot It In People– ostensibly a flop in Europe. Their devotion is something to behold – what happened to the snooty indie archetype? Is there a fashionably detached soul left in the building? I doubt it.
Technical hiccups mean Broken Social Scene, shortly to make their Irish debut, are running late. The group, a sprawling collective encompassing members of half a dozen Toronto bands, have had to rush their sound check – there really isn’t time for an interview. Still, Drew, and fellow frontman Brendan Canning, are keen to spread the word and have consented to a quick natter by the bar. With the doors already open, punters are streaming in – and look like they’re about to make off with Drew any moment now.
“That was great,” says Drew after another well-wisher vanishes into the mob, clutching an autographed record. “It means we are getting through to people. Broken Social Scene is all about celebration, about reaching out to the crowd. There isn’t supposed to be a barrier.“
Drew loves to hang with the audience because their enthusiasm reminds him why he got involved with Broken Social Scene in the first place. Keeping the project afloat is, he admits, a struggle and it is easy to become disillusioned. Not least due to the financial drain the group imposes on its members. “With so many people - well, I’d be lying if I said there weren’t occasionally tensions,” he admits. “Financially we aren’t doing ourselves any favours. The band is so big it is a strain keeping it together. We’re going to Australia later in the year - how much of a pain is that going to be to organise? So you have to make sacrifices - anything that means not having to compromise the music."
This sounds like a shtick, yet later in the evening Broken Social Scene will deliver an astonishing, elemental lesson in musical grandiosity. Astonishing not merely because of the diversity the players demonstrate, flitting from straight up indie-pop to affirmative post-rock to spectral folk songs, but because of the performance’s sheer, messianic ambition.
Over the course an 180 minute show, the best part of 20 musicians appear on stage. They exchange instruments, trade turns behind the microphone and, in the case of Drew and Canning, wander in the background, sporting mile-wide grins. Three hours flash past – it’s as if Broken Social Scene exist in a different time continuum and we, briefly, have been invited to their side of the magic door.
In the popular imagination, Broken Social Scene are a Canadian art-rock ‘supergroup’, with members drawn from Stars, The Dears and – well, a bunch of hopefuls you’ve never heard of (though one of those at least, Metric, would seem destined for imminent hugeness). Actually, the project is largely the brain child of Drew and Canning, veterans of the Toronto scene who craved music that transcended indie’s obsession with the the low-key, the insignificant, the tragically small.
The partnership began in 1999, when Canning left a message on Drew’s answering machine, suggesting they collaborate (“He courted me,” laughs Drew). What both yearned for was a sound that was epic and freighted with meaning. They were tired of striking poses, of creating self-referentially ‘cool’ music – Drew and Canning, who also run the label Arts + Crafts, wanted to embark on something with the power to change people’s lives.
Last year, a band from Canada achieved exactly this, with a record that touched the sky and rekindled your sense of wonder. That band was not Broken Social Scene – a fact that doesn’t seem to bother Canning or Drew in the least.
“We love the Arcade Fire, man. Love them. Not only for their music, which is fantastic obviously, but because of what they’ve achieved. They’ve opened doors for us, for all of Canadian rock. I don’t mind if people discover us through Arcade Fire. It’s not generally recognized in Europe that our last album was a moderately big hit in the US and Canada, so we were already getting the word out there. I think we paved the way for Arcade Fire. If they’re the new Nirvana, then we’re the new Sonic Youth.” He pauses, mulling the thought over. “Man – I’d rather be Sonic Youth than Nirvana.”
It was to a post-Arcade Fire world that Broken Social Scene last spring unveiled its latest work , a dense, rather oblique but nevertheless profoundly uplifting piece called merely, and with uncharacteristic diffidence, Broken Social Scene .
Making the record wasn’t without controversy – as one can imagine given the football team proportioned line-up of contributors. Reports of a rift with Dears singer Murray Lightburn – whose vocals Drew and Canning buried in the mix – are overstated. His label, Bella Union, were, however, considerably pissed.
Lightburn it transpires is unlikely to be on board for the next LP. He isn’t the only one whose loyalty to Broken Social Scene might have waned. With long time members of the BSS family such as vocalist Leslie Feist, Stars’ Amie Millan and Metric singer Emily Haines giving the day job renewed attention, how long, I wonder, before Broken Social Scene starts fraying at the edges?
“It won’t last because bands are doing their own thing,” confesses Drew. “That’s why we called this album Broken Social Scene. It’s the title of our little army, to mark the era when this impossible ideal of getting all these bands on one album actually worked.”