accessAtlanta

INDIE ROCK
Broken Social Scene
"Broken Social Scene."
Arts & Crafts. 21 tracks.
Grade: B-

There's a thick haze — part experimentation, part pretension, part perversity — over the songs on "Broken Social Scene."

(ENLARGE)
MOST POPULAR STORIES Police: Jeffrey Donovan arrested, suspected of DUI Report: Abdul's return to 'American Idol' doubtful Beastie Boy Adam Yauch has 'very treatable' cancer Fallon's '7th Floor West' is a silly, soapy treat Chris Brown apologizes for Rihanna beating
EMAIL THIS PRINT THIS MOST POPULAR

Broken Social Scene is a Canadian alliance loosely led by Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning; its members, now about a dozen, are also active in other Montreal bands. The sound of 21st-century Montreal is coalescing as upbeat anthems overstuffed with instruments and eccentricities. That style was as much a part of the band's beloved 2002 album, "You Forgot It in People," as of the Arcade Fire's more immediately celebrated 2004 album, "Funeral."

But "Broken Social Scene" refuses to ride on Montreal's momentum. The production is defiantly cluttered, with multiple drum tracks, stray horn sections, instruments run backward and voices and effects arriving out of nowhere. Lead vocals are buried in the mix, and many lyrics are slurred and swallowed.

The album looks back fondly to Pavement, which made its substantial guitar hooks and melodies sound rickety and distracted. One song is titled "Ibi Dreams of Pavement (A Better Day)." Broken Social Scene doesn't tamp down its Montreal exuberance; guitar lines leap out of songs like "7/4 (Shoreline)," "Fire Eye'd Boy" and "Superconnected." The murk clears for the album's finale, "It's All Gonna Break," but that song carries the album's least broadcastable lyrics.

It's easy to sympathize with a band that doesn't want to sell out. But Broken Social Scene confuses integrity with indulgence, burying good songs under way too much studio tomfoolery.

— Jon Pareles, New York Times