Broken Social Scene: Bee Hives : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

B-sides collections usually consist of divergent experiments, while full-length albums often stick to one style. However, Broken Social Scene, blithely unconcerned with conventions, are doing it the other way around. On this potent collection of previously unreleased material, the amorphous Toronto act -- beloved for 2003's You Forgot It in People -- plays consistently lo-fi songs charged with secrecy. Continuing the band's love affair with texture, each song is wrapped in several gauzy layers of beeps, blips and plucks, creating sonorous songscapes that stretch on for moonlit miles, that is until the minimalist closer, "Lovers Spit." On You Forgot, the prom-style ballad was anchored by dewy syncopation; here, Leslie Feist pours her vocals into a cracked glass jar with barely more than the piano to see her through. Fans of the kitchen sink approach may be disappointed that Broken Social Scene don't play much genre dress-up here, but these experimental pop gems swirl with lush romanticism and intelligence.

MARGARET WAPPLER
(April 26, 2004)