"They will burn out on their own shit and come back to us and say, 'Can I just not think about stuff for a month?' And they take that energy and they use it really well in their own bands." Bands like Stars and Metric need to be there, and we've been very grateful for the time they've devoted to us." Besides, he argues, they enjoy a kind of symbiotic relationship. "It would annoy me if their bands were bad. It's easy to imagine that Canning and Drew might grow a little irked by the constant to-ing and fro-ing of their band members, but Drew insists not. It must be the same with every band, but then when you throw men and women together and start playing music together, it's like being at summer camp." "Over the years there's been such emotional tumult. It just feels like this abstract thing." And the difficulties have not just been musical. "But we let ourselves get pulled in a lot of different ways, and you can kinda forget we're the founding members of this group. "The family is constantly expanding," nods Canning. While its shape-shifting enormity has been part of BSS's attraction, it has also provided its own complications, particularly for Canning and Drew. " She has barely begun her story when another fan wanders over. Emily was already writing absolutely amazing songs and I started singing with her and. We were very, very good friends for a very, very long time. But it was better because we had each other, and that sort of bonded us as a force. We walked in and we were late, and there was what felt like 200 kids all facing us. She came up and asked where the music class was. "And of course Emily I met on the first day at school. And it just hit, it hit really fast."īack in Cabbagetown, Millan, propped up by latte, is attempting to explain the complex, intertwining histories of the members of BSS. So one week James and Emily from Metric would be there, the next month Feist, the next month Amy and Evan from Stars. You Forgot It in People was birthed from that. In the beginning they would play shows at Ted's Wrecking Yard, and they'd play all new songs every show, and they'd play once a month. "The true ethos of that band is a collection of people collaborating together from other projects. "Social Scene really are the band that are at the centre of this community," insists Remedios. "But then they made You Forgot It in People, and they got me into the studio and said whaddyathink? And I said I'm in, I'm totally in." That meant leaving Virgin to found a record label, management company and music publisher with Drew, "that would just be like an arts collective, like the whole is bigger than the sum of its parts, that kind of theory".Īrts & Crafts started with one band, Broken Social Scene, and has grown steadily since. It sort of hit critical mass at a certain time."Īlready a good friend and sometime roommate of Canning and Drew, he at first took a mild interest in their project. "All these bands were starting to really come together, all these clubs were full, everyone would be going out to see local bands, which was a relatively new thing for us. "At the same time what was happening in Toronto was this incredible burgeoning music community," he recalls. Five years ago Remedios was working for Virgin, craving a little more independence, a tad more creativity. To Jeffrey Remedios of Arts & Crafts, the Olympic Island show is a celebration of four years of hard graft, during which all involved lived with a persistent fear "that we were going to fuck it up". The show will see 10,000 fans make the short ferry-hop from the mainland to bask in the sunshine and in performances by Raising the Fawn, J Mascis, Feist and Bloc Party, with a grand finale by BSS. Today the offices of the BSS's Toronto-based record label, Arts & Crafts, are crammed with boxes of merchandise, waiting to be shipped across to Olympic Island where tomorrow the group are curating a festival. At times BSS on stage will accommodate five guitarists, horns, drums, strings, three female vocalists and a couple of male voices to create a whirling, diving, clamour of sound, in shows that can stretch to three hours.
But it is live that they catch fire, as a kind of indie jam band.
BSS has somehow succeeded in producing three albums: the mainly instrumental debut Feel Good Lost (2001), the exceptional and impressionistic You Forgot It in People (2002) and last year's Broken Social Scene.
BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE TOUR PLUS
Today some 20 musicians drift in and out, including solo performers Leslie Feist and Jason Collett, plus Emily Haines and James Shaw of Metric, as well as countess others.
BSS is a Canadian supergroup or artistic collective, call it what you will, that began in 1999 with Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning, and has been accumulating members ever since.
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