Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Broken Social Scene - Forgiveness Rock Record review

Broken Social Scene is well known for being a collective of extremely talented musicians (in their field) that seemingly can't do no wrong. It may seem right to just label this as yet another indie pop album (in what is now a rather tired scene) but Forgiveness Rock Record retains the some of the band's signature moves whilst also furthering their desire to experiment with different sounds. After a couple of listens, there is little doubt that this is unmistakeably a Broken Social Scene album.

There's less guitar in this and much more melody. It is, in my view, one of the more accessible Broken Social Scene albums (certaintly more so than their instrumental debut) which isn't a totally bad thing. There are a couple of almost duds though - "Highway Slipper Jam", whilst not a bad song by itself is just so damn out of place and to make matters worse follows the excellent and energetic Lisa Lobsinger solo "All to All" (already a favourite of mine) and there's "Chase Scene". Still the quality outweighs the not so good and tracks like the all-female "Sentimental-X", "Forced to Love", "Sweetest Kill", "World Sick" and the mainly synthed "Romance to the Grave" will all be remembered as BSS classics.

Like anything else Broken Social Scene, Forgiveness Rock Record will divide the fanbase (it is already happening on last.fm). This is actually a good thing as there's plenty of stuff out there for different people and is what Broken Social Scene is known for. After all we are talking about a band who is well known for its colloborations with plenty of people from various music projects.

So an above average album by Broken Social Scene's standard is still a pretty damn good album by anyone else's. Highly recommended. Can't wait for my first BSS gig in June!

Forgivness Rock Record is now available from Amazon UK and Amazon.com.

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