Broken Social Scene: You Forgot It In People : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

The Canadian collective Broken Social Scene play for the indie gourmet, as their remarkable sophomore effort You Forgot It in People covers a range of catchy, art-rock weirdness. The songs are as varied as the rotating musicians, all fifteen hailing from Toronto's experimental rock circuit, who play them. Which means nothing is straight here. Masterminds Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning, along with their hipster friends, race through frantic rockers only to pause at their most frenzied and then seduce again with slower, spacier numbers. From top to bottom People . . . is packed with unexpected treasures. There's the starry, ascending "KC Accidental," the groovy, horned instrumental "Pacific Theme," and the delicious mock-lullaby "Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl." Yet at the slightest hint of normalcy, a fog of grating guitars, haunting strings, and eerie moans deconstruct it into a noisy, masterful slop. And it is precisely this atmospheric mania, coupled with a tingling pop sensibility that gives People . . . it's backbone, as if daring you to enter.

BENJAMIN FRIEDLAND
(August 19, 2003)