Broken Social Scene's Brendan Canning - Interview

The beauty of Montreal-based Broken Social Scene is how easily its many conspicuous personalities lose themselves in one another to feed the whole of what they’re creating.

While Broken Social Scene as a collective has been garnering critical and fan attention since the band’s 2003 American debut You Forgot It In People through to the current self-titled album, the individual projects of group members have simultaneously taken off.

Possibly the biggest achievement is Feist (Leslie Feist) whose solo release Let It Die was awarded 2005 Juno Awards for both Best New Artist and Best Alternative Album. (In 2003 Broken Social Scene also was awarded the Juno for Best Alternative Album). Social Scene members Amy Millan, Evan Cranley and Torquil Campbell have had success with their outfit Stars as has Emily Haines and James Shaw in Metric, Andrew Whiteman with Apostle of Hustle and member Jason Collett. But each artist returns to feed the larger community, a beautiful mess of order or confusion called Broken Social Scene.

At the heart of Broken Social Scene is the label Arts & Crafts, created by Broken Social Scenes’ Kevin Drew with music business veterans Jeffrey Remedios and Daniel Culter. The goal has always been to produce art and within that members constantly inspire and challenge one another. Broken Social Scene’s usual round of suspects on any day currently includes Justin Peroff, Brendan Canning, Kevin Drew, Charles Spearin, Andrew Whiteman, Feist, Jason Collett, Evan Cranley, Emily Haines, James Shaw, Amy Millan, Dave Newfeld, John Crossingham, Ohad Benchitrit, Julie Penner, and Lisa Lobsinger. The Aquarian Weekly talks to BSS’s Brendan Canning.

AW: How do you feel about the recent success of Broken Social Scene and the rise of many of its individual members, like Feist and Metric?

Brendan Canning: Well it’s pretty exciting times, especially right now. The next couple months are sort of fast action. We have our homecoming shows, two shows in Toronto Friday and Saturday, playing a 2,300 seat venue for two nights and the next day we go to Sundance because we have a film at the Sundance Film Festival called Half Nelson, an independent film made by this Brooklyn director and producer. The most famous guy in it is Ryan Gosling. It’s a really good film. They had sort of used the music from Feel Good Lost and You Forgot It In People and Beehives [all Arts & Crafts albums] as well to score their film. We have New York after that and then an appearance on Conan O’Brien and then off to the U.K. for a whack of sold-out dates, and then an Australian tour to follow. Meanwhile, we have Leslie Feist in Montreal playing a sold-out show for 2000 people. We have Metric opening up for The Rolling Stones. We have Jason Collett in Europe. Andrew Whiteman’s working on a solo record. Charles Spearin just had a baby, which is probably the biggest news of all, second child as a matter of fact. And John Crossingham’s band, Raising the Fawn, is releasing a record. Julie Penner continues to produce the show Vinyl Café on radio up here, so the list goes on.

AW: It’s sort of a revolving door membership?

Canning: Yeah, we’ll have different members for New York than we will for Toronto, like Emily and James from Metric won’t be in Toronto, but they will be in New York. Leslie Feist, Amy Milan and Evan won’t be with us in New York, but they will be in Toronto. Charles won’t be with us for Sundance, but he will be in Toronto and New York.

AW: So it takes real organization to lock up your live set list I’d imagine.

Canning: The whole thing with everyone’s careers coming to such great fruition has made it more difficult to orchestrate Broken Social Scene as a touring entity and a traveling sideshow.

AW: Despite individual careers, everyone seems to be returning. It’s a statement about the music and the genuine importance of collaborating with people you enjoy.

Canning: The fact is it was all based upon friendship. There were no ads and papers. The only person we’ve reached outside the circle was our latest singer Lisa Lobsinger, mainly due to the fact that between Amy, Emily and Leslie Feist, we had no one to maintain the vocal duties and Lisa was a singer from a group I heard in Calgary. She was very close in range to Amy and Emily so that is why she got the call. Other than that everything has been within the family so to speak.

AW: What’s the process of writing a Broken Social Scene album like?

Canning: It’s very similar to the touring aspect. Some days you have certain members. Other days you have certain other members and a lot of it comes down to timing and how inspired an individual is towards a certain tune. There’s a core of us like myself, Justin Peroff, and Kevin Drew. We don’t have other bands. Obviously something needs to steer Broken Social Scene on a consistent basis because it is arguably the hardest beast to contain. And Andrew Whiteman, beyond Apostle of Hustle, he’s very much part of the Broken Social Scene sound as is Charles Spearin, as is everyone. But I mean at the core, that’s a good five that need to be involved on a fairly regular basis. As far as horn sections, they come when they come. As far as Feist or Emily or Amy, they are there when they’re there and we gladly welcome them when they show cause we need them.

AW: Do you write with a particular member in mind as far as singing or playing or just figure it out later?

Canning: I don’t think there’s any great pre-meditation. At least myself, I don’t really think that way. The opening track on this record, I actually did a vocal for and it got scrapped and then Amy was maybe going to do a vocal and she wasn’t quite inspired for it and Feist came in and nailed it.

AW: Everyone brings things to life a different way then?

Canning: Yeah, like “Stars and Sons” on You Forgot It In People, Kevin originally want in to try a couple vocal passes and there was me sort of saying, ‘Let me try something.’ Some days it can be very easy. Some days it can be very difficult.

AW: What’s next?

Canning: We have a whack of material recorded…I think we will release something before the end of the year—because we should…It’s interesting to see how the band mutates and develops.

Broken Social Scene performs at Webster Hall January 26, 27, 28.

Originally published in The Aquarian Weekly 1/25/06.

Here's "Almost Crimes" live with really bad audio quality, but you can tell they're having fun.


Broken Social Scene video for "Fire Eye'd Boy."