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Stuck in my head: Broken Social Scene

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Back in The Day, which was around 1987 for me, one's music collection was a well-defined entity comprised of discrete, easily counted units. For example, one might have 20 cassettes from one's favorite artists. Everything was predictable and if you wanted new music you turned to the radio. But since it was radio, there were rarely musical surprises that came out of nowhere. Especially not at 1 AM while working on your computer, as was the case for me last night. But more on that just a bit later.

These days music collections are vast, sprawling things kept on compact hard drives and portable music players. My MP3 collection takes up 30 Gigs, and this is pretty small compared to most people's iTunes music directories. So last night I had my iTunes set to shuffle-all and up popped a wonderful surprise. I recognized the band as Broken Social Scene, one of my favorite Canadian rock bands (described on Wikipedia as an "indie rock supergroup"). But the song was completely new to me. The name of the track was 7/4 Shoreline but no album name was listed. So I looked it up on the various internets and found out that Broken Social Scene released a self-titled extended album back in 2005 that I somehow missed.

So I have no idea how this track ended up on my computer. Maybe one of you cross-pollinated my library while I was in Berkeley. Perhaps Owen downloaded it (his answers to my queries alternate between elusive and cryptic). Or maybe aliens are trying to communicate with me through my favorite music.

Whatever the explanation, I love this album! Here's a video for the song:

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The Ghost of John Brown said…
Not long ago I went to a venue called The Varsity Theater here in town to see a Canadian band called "Do Make Say Think." It turns out their performance that night was one of the best live shows I've ever seen. Also on the bill was another Candian group called, "Apostles of Hustle." That band is composed of member[s] of "Broken Social Scene." Where Do Make Say Think did, made, said (in a limited way - they are largely an instrumental group), and thought, Apostles of Hustle managed to bore, choke, dull, and (gasp!) lecture. Just so you know, Apostles of Hustle also make a point of singing in Spanish. I think they might have spent some time down in Cuba. Aside from the fact that I don't know enough Spanish to criticize what they were singing about, I will say that there are few things more obnoxious than a band of Canucks getting up there and droning on in another language. I don't trust them. It would have helped if their music didn't remind me of Sublime meets The Buena Vista Social Club. In a word: icky.
November 20, 2007 at 2:54 PM
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