Broken Social Scene - Remember The Humans
Arts & Crafts
Released on May 8th, 2026
Ok, this is a big one. 23 years ago, I was a young long-haired version of myself, still living in Edmonton, playing in a terrible band that I loved and at the time thought had some potential. I couldn’t tell you what genre we were, and we could never really settle on a name, though we jokingly called ourselves Mulletface for reasons that are incredibly hazy. At the time I was listening to a lot of punk and stoner rock, with a bit of early Mars Volta thrown in for flavour I suppose. The music I was writing in those days had sloppy, drop-D tuned energy and some pretty myopic, depressive lyrics. We were derivative at best, but we were derivative of so many mediocre things that we didn’t really fit a scene.
Then something happened that I would say was cataclysmic in my musical education, something that shaped the direction of the rest of my life. You Forgot it In People was released and everything changed. Suddenly I was reminded that I loved texture, ambient sounds, harmonies, unpredictable song structures and lyrics that still had all of the big feelings I was feeling at the time but channelled in a way that felt hopeful rather than apathetic. It took a little while to sink in - I didn’t shift from mopey stoner punk to skinny jeans wearing scene kid overnight (and to be fair, I was a bit too fat for the skinny jeans anyway), but it unlocked something in me that I didn’t think existed and opened my eyes to a Canadian music movement that was on the verge of exploding. I wanted to write music like this. I never got there, but it changed the way I approached writing and the way I related to people in subtle little ways I don’t quite think I could comprehend at the time.
By 2007, my long hair was long gone, I was living in Windsor for grad school and visiting friends in Toronto for the weekend. I found myself at a now-defunct little venue called the Dakota Tavern to see a couple of bands and in walks Kevin Drew and Leslie Feist. I immediately gathered up the nerve to say hello, in awe of the indie-rock royalty in my presence and somehow spent the next 20-30 minutes having a beer with them. I wanted to talk about gear, life on the road, weird time signatures and songwriting, but they were mostly interested in my research. They were so… human for lack of a better word. They craved conversations and meaningful interactions with their fans and carried on with a real sense of compassion and empathy, much like the way their lyrics make them seem. They say you should never meet your heroes because you’ll always be disappointed - in this case, the cliché was entirely wrong. I was a fan before, but this little interaction carried so much weight. I’ve never missed a release from any of the bands and artists associated with BSS as a result.
In the intervening years, the band has become its own mythology, with various films, books, projects, lineup shifts, but nowhere near the output of their first decade. Arts & Crafts, the label created essentially to distribute You Forgot it In People went from upstart to establishment, with distribution deals for several dozens of artists across Canada, the US and Mexico, curating festivals, and winning awards, but BSS releases dwindled, much to my chagrin.
Remember the Humans is their first LP release in nine years, and it represents a kind of full circle moment calling back to those heady days of 2003. David Newfeld is back in the producer’s chair having produced both YFIIP and 2005’s Broken Social Scene and even the title Remember the Humans feels like a play on that landmark 2003 release. The album features contributions from past members like Feist, who resurrected the track “What Happens Now” that was previously written during the Hug of Thunder sessions and Lisa Lobsinger, who was a member from 2005-2011, sings lead on “Relief”. Former opening act Hannah Georgas sings on “Only the Good I Keep”, a song written by Kevin Drew but ceded to Hannah because her vocals were just that good. Other former singers Emily Haines and Amy Millan had a song that didn’t make the final cut.
But the album isn’t a nostalgia trip despite these callbacks. It’s alive, vibrant and beautiful. The band is not trying to recapture the past but rather the sound of a “band deepening rather than reinventing, exploring the emotional implications of forms they have spent over 20 years shaping. In a culture defined by abstraction and distance, BSS have made a record that insists that we remember each other, that we remember the human.”
There are so many little moments in the album to parse through. The production allows the chaos of the band to make sense. No instrument ever feels out of place, no song sounds too fussy. The collective spirit of the band shines through, with six different singers taking lead vocal turns - the previously mentioned Feist, Lobsinger and Georgas along with Kevin Drew, Ariel Engle (“The Briefest Kiss”) and Andrew Whitman (“The Call”). For a band with so many members and so many voices, nothing feels cluttered. Even the studio dialogue (“Can I have a little more of that click maybe?”), a trick that often comes across too cute or twee makes sense in the context of the album. It really feels like a bunch of friends returning together to make beautiful noise that celebrates people, places and life. They’re a little older, a little wiser, the songs are a little bit softer, but the spirit remains. They’re searching for authentic, meaningful connections with each other and the people that have been along for the ride all this time. A song like “And I think of You” may not have the same driving energy as “7/4 (Shoreline)” but it is clearly the work of the same band, with big swells and a powerful cathartic release. As with every full-length BSS release, the album cannot be reduced to single songs – it’s meant to be experienced as an album, played front to back. The songs are connected to each other lyrically, musically, threaded together through a kind of sonic language that more than 20 years as a band, collective and chosen family can share. I’m so glad they’re back.