Broken Social Scene - Hug of Thunder (Album Review)
Monday, 17 July 2017
Written by Jennifer Geddes
On ‘Hug of Thunder’, Broken Social Scene provide a soundtrack for the modern times of Generation X. The record finds the collective back together after a gap of seven years and turning to their musical community to provide solace at a time of great anxiety.
The closing track on the album, Mouth Guards of The Apocalypse, documents Kevin Drew’s struggle with panic attacks in his sleep, but it also speaks to a fear of the external that runs throughout ‘Hug of Thunder’.
The band’s clustered instrumentation adds to apocalyptic imagery on songs like Skyline, where they repeat the phrase: “The skyline waits for the world / The skyline waits for the fall / But you shouldn't have come at all.” On Halfway Home, meanwhile, they sing: “This is my horror time / This is my fallen fate / Cause if you never run, never run / How they gonna catch you alive?”.
It’s not all doom and gloom, though. Broken Social Scene’s songs always rise to a chaotic climax, only to fall to a moment of quiet and delicate melody. New member Ariel Engle takes over on Gonna Get Better, singing: “Things will get better / 'Cuz they can't get worse.” It’s small, but there’s a glimmer among the dark clouds.
The band find hope in the collective. In the years since the release of ‘Forgiveness Rock Record’ there have been many marriages plus a number of kids born, and these celebrations have kept the group’s lives intertwined. Friendship has always been at the heart of Broken Social Scene, with the band acting as showcase for a group of Toronto musicians who all knew each other in the early 2000s, and that’s continued as the individual members’ solo ventures have taken root.
That’s still the case here. ‘Hug of Thunder’ emerges in the same year as a new Feist record, while Charles Spearin’s Do Make Say Think put out ‘Stubborn Persistent Illusions’ back in May. Emily Haines will release her second solo album, ‘Choir of the Mind’, in September and Stars, which features several members of Broken Social Scene, recently rolled out the first single from their forthcoming record.
Hug of Thunder, sung by Feist, can trace its surprisingly minimalist roots to her ‘Pleasure’ LP, and it makes the most of the band’s ability to sound epic and intimate at the same time. Haines, meanwhile, contributes to Protest Songs. It’s guitar-driven, with a more conventional structure reflective her band Metric, and has a tongue-in-cheek message: “We're just the latest on the longest rank and file that's ever to exist / In the history of the protest song.”
The album’s producer, Joe Chiccarelli, has tried to bring out the band’s pop melodies. You can really hear that effort on Protest Songs and Vanity Pail Kids, which sounds like pre-’Reflektor’ Arcade Fire, but mostly this isn’t a big departure. Halfway Home, Stay Happy and Skyline could all easily fit on any of the band’s previous albums thanks to the sweeping hooks, multi-vocal harmonies and orchestral instrumentation in the mix.
For those who remember when ‘You Forget it in People’ was released, the band can conjure an immediate sense of nostalgia for a time when things seemed bad, but not so bad that everything might fall apart. There’s a privilege, though, in being able to retreat to the familiar, to find comfort in a human touch and gather among those who agree with your view of the world. As a result, ‘Hug of Thunder’ feels lacking in contemporary relevance both in sound and message, even if indulging in the past does feel good.
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