(t5!) Heroes Of The Zeroes Albums: #05: Broken Social Scene – You Forgot It In People (2002)

Don’t trust anyone who claim that they were anticipating You Forgot It In People, Broken Social Scene’s second album, when it was being released. It’s the same people who say they couldn’t wait for Girl Talk’s Night Ripper when it was coming out because they’ve enjoyed his previous obscure mash-up sensations. Lies! The album before this, their debut Feel Good Lost, was a collection of ambitious instrumentals that was disregarded right out of the gates. Nobody, not even the indiest or the most Canadian of all Canadian indie fans, saw this coming. At the time, they were only 10 members deep, 10 participants from the Toronto music scene gather to create pop music. They’ve been previously involved with bands like Stars, Metric, Do Make Say Think, A Silver Mt. Zion, Feist (who we all know by now thanks to those gaudy iPod commercials), and they get together to make four-minute songs instead of perpetual opuses. As if it’s easy as cake.

That’s You Forgot It In People’s crowning moment, how staggeringly easy Broken Social Scene has blended their post-rock backgrounds with indie pop music. Other collectives with members belonging to dissimilar genres have tried making such an amalgamation, but you can always expect it to sound forced, artificial, and unnatural. Not here, it sounds absolutely genuine, natural, and easy. And it sounds pretty exceptional too. It sounds shimmering still, yet far more gratifying because of the more focused melodies to which it is applied. Perhaps, its most surprising achievement is that this is all done without renouncing the originality of bands like Do Make Say Think. In fact, elements from these bands are enhanced, applied in these songs as if a pop structure were the rational progression from the post-rock’s roundabout.

My personal experience with You Forgot It In People is very significant. Cramming for a final exam in university, I was stultified by the mainstream pop, heavy-rotation R&B, club-banging hip-hop, and random Limewire downloads. It’s not that my previous music collection was unlistenable—I mean, this was the era of “Hey Ya”, “Ignition [Remix]”, “Crazy In Love”, and “Get Low”. I just wanted something more, something fresh, something I’ve never heard of before. In comes a trustworthy friend proposing an album, maybe not in the same exaggeration as Natalie Portman telling Zach Braff that The Shins will “save his life”, but sort of in the same vein. And then, hooked, just like that.

I was blown away by my introduction to Broken Social Scene: “Almost Crimes” reinvigorated my spirit, “Cause = Time” made me want to rise in rebellion (against what, exactly, I’m not sure of), “Anthems Of A Seventeen Year Old Girl” compelled me to smile and become starry-eyed, “Lover’s Spit” slowed my entire surrounding into a drawl, “Looks Just Like The Son” placed me in a tranquil paradise, “Pacific Theme” brought out the frolics in me, “Stars And Sons” coerced me to clap along, “KC Accidental” galloped all the way to my welcoming heart. I came out of the other end flummoxed, wanting more. Are there more of this soul-stirring music that are kept hidden by the gatekeepers of radio? If so, where can I find them? It started a quest (which made easier thanks to the Internets) and from then on, I sort of became maniacal finding sounds that can captivate me as well as You Forgot It In People did. It’s my fifth favorite album but it’s the most vital one out of all the albums I listened to in this decade. Without it, I probably would have never heard of most of the albums in this list.