This Book Is Broken: A Broken Social Scene Story [In The Stacks]
Posted August 18th, 2010 · Artists: Broken Social Scene, Do Make Say Think, Feist, Metric, Stars
As we progress through the growth and dissemination of indie rock becoming a more popular and ubiquitous type of music, we are starting to see a few books come out on some of the bands and groups that were influential through the late 90s and early 2000s in this way. I covered Out Noise, the book about Merge Records late last year, and this book shares a lot of similarities to that book. There isn’t necessarily a lot of storytelling or writing, it is more told through snippets, interviews, anecdotes and vignettes that cover the various events and time periods covering the bands in question. Just like Our Noise, pretty much the whole book is told in the form of quotes of the band members, producers, friends, etc, it is in their own words. Whereas Our Noise was about Superchunk and Merge Records, this book is about Broken Social Scene and Arts & Crafts Records. The book is similarly interesting and insightful, but is not quite as engrossing or in depth as the Merge book, but still a great read if, like me, you are a big BSS fan.
The book covers a shorter time period and less bands than Our Noise, so it is necessarily more brief and a little less involved. The basic story of the book covers all of these people who are all extremely well known now (Emily Haines, Kevin Drew, Leslie Feist, Amy Millan, Brendan Canning, etc) and how they all kind of ended up in the same area around Toronto in a bunch of different bands and how Canning and Drew kind of got all these people together and started making music. The book kind of touches on the other notable bands connected to this story mostly in passing (Stars, Metric, Do Make Say Think), and the focus of the book is on BSS. The story of how everyone came together and how the band became this sort of rotating collective of great artists is very interesting and it is a good read.
Since BSS had at the time of this book only 3 records, there is not a ton covered in the way of material, tours, etc and the focus of the book is really on the formation of the band and the relationships between the people. The genesis and recording of You Forgot It In People is a big topic in the book as well and is interesting how they took these free form live jams and took pieces of those together and made this amazing record.
Similar to the other book, the overriding commentary from the book shares the same tone, in that here are these people who did it their own way, stayed in the indie system, made their own label and made great music without catering to any A&R/major label people and they are all the more successful for it. Likewise it is certainly another indictment of the problems of the major label system and how that can stifle creativity and growth, and certainly the message is that BSS wouldn’t have made it and survived and existed without doing it their own way. This is certainly a running commentary in the music world nowadays, and I think we are constantly being proven that the indie labels, with technology and the internet, are continually gaining a more even field with the majors and that these indie labels can survive and thrive in the current music business, and the old major model just isn’t going to work as it once did. This is another great example of a group of people that stuck with what they wanted to do, and like Merge, Arts & Crafts is one of the top indie labels out there going today.
I think the book is a little more one-dimensional and a little less interesting from a general point of view than Our Noise was. There were a few more perspectives in that book and this book shares a lot of the same great qualities but feels a little shorter and less meticulous than the Merge book. I would say if you are a BSS fan this is a great read, and even if you love Stars, Metric, Feist, etc, this should interest you as well. If you are kind of not tied to either these bands or the Merge bands, the Merge book is a little stronger overall and may be more interesting to you, and if you like that style go ahead and check this one out as well. It is nice to see some of these indie music groups getting attention in print with these two fine books and hopefully this is yet another sign of the growth of this indie music world and more books will focus on this current scene and shift in the way we consume and listen to music. We are certainly at a very intersting time in music history here with all of the technological shifts that have broken down a lot of the old walls, and these books both hit on that point quite well.
