Broken Social Scene - Feel Good Lost

Broken Social Scene weren't always the indie-tastic supergroup they are now.  Before they blew up with You Forgot It In People, which featured a much-expanded lineup, they put out this great album, which I sought out as soon as I heard the former.  Feel Good Lost is a much more low-key affair than their later music, but you can still see echoes of it in tracks like You Forgot's "Kc Accidental" and the track I posted earlier this week, "Baroque Social" from their bonus EP To Be You And Me.  To be sure, these tracks were the exception to the rule on the albums they came on, and as such may not be what people want or expect from this band.  But in truth, it's where they started, and Feel Good Lost stands on its own very well, although it is really in a completely different genre.

The album as a whole is kind of gauzy and soft - rarely, if ever, are there any squealing guitar solos or thunderous drum breaks.  It actually reminds me of Do Make Say Think's & yet & yet, with meandering, layered songs and sort of groovy rhythms, in fact the more I think about it the more the similarities become apparent.  While there is an ever-present low end in the form of excellent bass work, each track sets itself apart with different instrumentation - a few sport vocals, some strings or horns, some live drums, some from a kit, and so on.  The variation is welcome, as without it the music would grow tiring, as I feel it does on the second-to-last track, "Last Place," in which the groove and instruments overstay their welcome by quite a bit.  Don't go thinking this is elevator music just because it never explodes, though.  It's far too interesting for that.

Feel Good Lost may never approach the bombast and intricacy of Broken Social Scene's more recent music, but it never collapses under the weight of its components, either.  The scope is small but the execution is fantastic - don't be for another moment without it.

Here's "Love and Mathematics," by Broken Social Scene.

Comments

[aL]

Hey, you got some pretty good reviews here. Found your page while looking for Alaska! mp3s.

[aL]

frick, forgot to mention, likes the Futurama reference.