Foto-© BSS, Kevin Drew, Jordan Allen

Fast ein Jahrzehnt nach dem letzten Album kehren Broken Social Scene mit Remember the Humans zurück. Es ist eine Platte, die weniger wie ein großes Comeback klingt als wie ein langsames Wiederfinden. Entstanden ist sie aus Momenten der Verbindung: aus den Jubiläumsshows zu You Forgot It in People, aus der unerwarteten Wiederentdeckung von Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl durch die Trans-Community und aus der erneuten Zusammenarbeit mit Produzent David Newfeld. Im Zentrum steht dabei immer wieder die Frage nach Zugehörigkeit, nach Gemeinschaft und danach, was „Zuhause“ eigentlich bedeutet – als Band, als Künstler:in und als Mensch in einer Zeit permanenter Unsicherheit.

Wir konnten im März mit Kevin Drew per Zoom sprechen. Im Gespräch ging es um das Älterwerden in einer Band, über Kontrolle und das Loslassen davon, über das Selbstverständnis von Broken Social Scene innerhalb der Indiegeschichte der frühen 2000er und darüber, warum Musik für ihn immer noch ein heiliger Raum ist. Im Gespräch erzählt er außerdem, weshalb Remember the Humans beinahe ein Triplealbum geworden wäre, warum die Band die Platte bewusst auf ein einziges Vinyl pressen wollte und wie es sich anfühlt, nach fast drei Jahrzehnten festzustellen, dass es für manche Bands schlicht keinen Ersatz gibt.

It’s been almost a decade since the last album. What sparked the creative momentum to come back? Did you always know there would eventually be another record?
I think it started when we did the “You Forgot It in People” anniversary shows. The amount of love we received from the audiences and the people we were playing with was incredible. Around the same time, “Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl” had this resurgence online: a word we’d never used before, but it kind of went viral. It was featured in the film “I Saw the TV Glow”. The trans community really got behind the song as a way of describing parts of their own lives and experiences. Seeing that happen was such an honor for us. To watch people place that song on the mantelpiece of their personal struggles – that’s why you make music. You hope people can find identity in a song. Between that and the anniversary shows, we started thinking: maybe we should get back in a room together and see what happens. Around that time, I had moved away from Toronto and ended up living not too far from our old producer, David Newfeld, who worked on “You Forgot It in People” and the self-titled record with us. We rekindled our friendship, and it all started from a very healthy place. We left a lot of the history behind and just felt really good about what we’d done together. I told him the band wanted to come back in and see what it would be like to work together again. We took our time with it. We lost family members along the way, and we all have full lives outside the band. We started, stopped, started again, stopped again. It really wasn’t until spring 2024 that we finally said, “Okay, let’s properly do this.” The thing is, when you have chemistry like ours – something built on compromise, compassion, and sometimes annoyance – good things can happen creatively. And when you’ve been a band together for as long as we have, there’s also a much more relaxed environment. And when you’ve been a band for as long as we have, there’s a much more relaxed environment. You stop worrying so much about everyone needing to put their signature on things or control every part of the process. When you reach those grateful years where you’re still able to keep doing this, you learn to let a lot go. You allow the process to take as long as it needs to, you let the songs find their homes, and you hold on to the idea that if we’re going to do this, we should make it the best thing we possibly can for other people. We’ve never been a mainstream band. We never signed to a major label or took huge commercial deals. We’ve always stayed under our own little glass ceiling. We’ve kind of stayed under our own glass ceiling, and we’ve had an incredible amount of support from labels, publicists, agents, and so many other people who’ve stood by us as we’ve gotten older. And there’s also this aspect of coming back with a huge group of songs – this sort of emotional vending machine of music – which is maybe part of the narcissistic side of being an artist. We’re trying to create ripples. We don’t have the financial backing or the audience size to make huge waves, but we do have this spiritual connection and memory with people who’ve listened to us over the years. That’s enough for us. We never intended to take nine years between records. But the reality is that we’re human beings who make music. We have other jobs. We have other ways of creating funding for our families. And with everything going on in the world right now, it wasn’t lost on us that we’re still a group of people who, after 27 or 28 years, are still together, still able to do this together, and still able to get out there and play for people. That’s something we definitely don’t take lightly.

It sounds to me like what you’re describing ties in perfectly with the title of the album. The way I understand it, a lot of it seems to come from moments of connection: reconnecting with live audiences, connecting with the trans community through the song, and reconnecting with David Newfeld again…
And all of us, too. We’re not as close as we used to be, but we have a photo album, and that photo album is still alive. Sometimes that works against you, because it’s like family: when you don’t want to go home for Christmas, it’s often because you’ve done all this work on yourself — you’ve read the self-help books, maybe done ayahuasca, and you’re thinking, “Oh my God, I’ve changed.” Then you go home and people are like, “No, we know exactly who you are.” And that’s what being in a band can feel like. I think a lot of us returned somewhat reluctantly because, as much as we loved the people in that room, we didn’t necessarily want to go through the process of them defining who we are again – not just personally, but musically as well. But you just have to work through it.

At the same time, a lot of what you’re describing comes back to other people – to listeners connecting with the songs. Even when you talk about not wanting others to define who you are, the audience still seems deeply tied to the process. Do you feel that listeners become part of the writing process too?
Yes. That’s because you think about songs in a room full of people. We’ve always tried to bring everyone into the same room because we never wanted to get political or divisive. Maybe there’s hatred in that room, or homophobia, or racism, but in that setting, with those people together, things can change. Minds can change. Views can change. I’ve seen it firsthand through music. Music has this incredible ability to redefine where someone stands – not only morally, but in their beliefs and in the way they love. A concert is a very sacred space. And honestly, I’ve spent more time as an audience member than I have on stage. It’s like a church, but it’s a church directed by the audience, not by the band. So we really do think about that when we’re deciding what goes on a record. We think: what do we want to give people? We want to have some things for longtime listeners, sounds they know and recognize, but we also want to go somewhere different and try new things. There’s one song on the record that’s six minutes and 32 seconds long, and I fought hard to keep the original version, which was nine minutes and 38 seconds. Eventually the band and David said, “Come on, Kevin, we’ve got to shorten this.” But I wanted it to stay that long because I wanted to throw people into this meditative state. And honestly, I also wanted to challenge people who instantly press skip, because everything now is about the first 90 seconds.

What did you take away from making Remember the Humans yourself? Did the process change something in you personally or within the band beyond ending up with a finished record?
More than anything, it reminded me of the melodies. And the melodies I create with this group of people feel like home to me. So much of what we talk about is this idea of: where is home? So much of what wars are about right now comes down to identity and home. And when you choose to live this kind of life, you often end up with one foot in the door and one foot out. Some people can live that way easily, and some people struggle with it – whether that’s because of shame, guilt, or simply because that’s the reality of their lives. Some partners understand that kind of life and some don’t. Sometimes you even find yourself in relationships where the other person lives the same way. So there’s always this question of where home really is if one foot is always outside the door. And I think that conversation about home feels especially relevant right now, when so much is tied to what people can afford, what they own, where they’ll be able to live, and what’s going to happen politically. People are genuinely wondering whether they’ll still have their homes five years from now. For me, the biggest thing I took away from coming back, especially from working with David Newfeld again and reconnecting with that chemistry, was realizing that this is a house I’ve built with these people. It’s a house I understand, and it’s a house I can carry with me anywhere. And that gave me a real sense of freedom in the sense that, if everything does burn down, I’ll still have my melodies to help me build bricks somewhere else.

You also invited a lot of other people into that house on this record. Artists like Feist, Lisa Lobsinger, and Hannah Georgas all feature on the album. I also read that, at times, you stepped back and asked who could best serve a particular song, even if that meant handing over control creatively. I imagine that requires a certain vulnerability being able to say, “Actually, this person is the right voice for this moment, not me.” I loved the image in the press release about you being the designated driver while other people were allowed to take the wheel for a while. That metaphor really stayed with me. Was it easy to work that way? How did you arrive at that level of trust and openness?
I wouldn’t say I was the driver. Charly Spearin and David Newfeld were the drivers. And every now and then we’d say, “Come on, just chill out, get some rest. We’ll drive for a bit.” We really wanted David to make the best record possible. But in the final stages, Charly and I got much more involved, especially Charly. So in the end, all of us got to drive at some point. But you can’t drive Leslie. Feist drives herself. Ariel Engle drives herself. Everybody has their own vehicle. If we stay with the metaphor, it was more about all of us driving together in formation. At this point, though, all of us have to step aside a little. There’s no real control anymore. When Lisa Lobsinger said, “I heard this song during a meditation,” she thought it was one of her favorite Broken Social Scene songs. Then she went looking for it and realized, no, she had actually written something new herself. So, she sent it to us saying, “Hey, I just wanted you to hear this.” That warmed our hearts so much. First because Lisa had written a Broken Social Scene song, which she hadn’t really done before, and second because she came back to the crew in such a natural way after we hadn’t seen each other for a while. And obviously, when you spend this many years together, there are always ups and downs as you get older. And when Leslie came in with her song, you stop thinking about songwriting credits or ownership or who contributed what. When she sings, “What happens now? What happens next?”, if that’s the emotional theme, then that’s what we follow. It’s not about who owns the song or who was there first. It just becomes: is this for the greater good? As cliché as that sounds, is this something we genuinely want people to hear? And Leslie gave us that opportunity. Not as a single, not as some marketing campaign saying, “Hey, Feist is on the record.” None of that bullshit. It was simply: here’s a beautiful song. And then she allowed us to pour all this sound around it. David even took one of her final verses and moved it over a bridge section. When I heard that, I wrote to him and said, “There’s no way Leslie is going to allow that.” In my head, she had sent us the song in a very specific structure. But it turned out to be a perfect example of how wrong I was. When she heard it, she wrote back saying, “This is amazing. I love that you changed it.” And I realized that I was the one assuming she needed control, when actually she was letting go too. And look, people are gone now. When you lose friends or lose parents, you really start evaluating what you’re doing here and how you want to spend your time. Since all of us have these other spaces in our lives where we can control things – solo records, other projects, different creative outlets – this time it became more about trying to make something that matters to the realm of our shared memories. Knowing that David was driving the car allowed a lot of us to let go of control. I’ve been saying this a lot lately: if you’re controlling your life, you’re probably not really living your life. Obviously, you don’t want your life controlled by terrible people either, but sometimes you need to let go a little and see where the flow takes you. I almost said “river,” and then I thought, don’t fucking say river.

Very Bruce Springsteen.
Joni Mitchell. Very white fucking old people analogy.

I’m wondering whether you also started with a sonic vision for the album. The record has so many layers to it. Every time you listen, you notice something new hiding in the mix. As a listener, it feels like you keep rediscovering the album with every play.
That’s really the band, because there are just so many people involved. And over time, everyone has learned how to leave space for each other and then come back in again. That’s when you start hearing all these other little things emerge in the music. And then there’s David Newfeld. That was always David’s sound. We worked so well within the way he processes music: his gear, his methods, the way he balances everything. That’s why I was so excited to work with him again. I loved our last record with him, and I also loved the record we made with John McEntire from Tortoise, Forgiveness Rock Record. But after 20 years, there’s something meaningful about saying: when everything first started changing for us, this was the person we were working with. There’s a sonic landscape between us – again, that word chemistry – where something happens when we all get together. David has made tons of records with tons of bands, but there’s something particular about the way we work together. One of your fellow Germans actually told me, “I couldn’t listen to the whole record from start to finish.” And I said, “I understand that.” There’s so much happening on it that sometimes you need to take a break. We didn’t really approach it as an album at first. We approached it song by song, and then later we had to figure out how to make everything fit together as a record. If Charles Spearin had gotten his way, this would have been a triple album. And I was like, “Okay, maybe let’s try to keep it to twelve songs.” But that soundscape, the layers of melodies, the subliminal ambient sounds, all those details, that’s something all of us grew up loving. It became part of the band’s identity. And it happens live too: there are all these different things happening at once. Part of it is just everyone’s personalities colliding, and part of it is the trickery of David Newfeld’s mind.

It’s funny you say that, because when I saw that the album had twelve songs, I immediately thought: You can tell this is a band that’s been around for a while. You allow yourselves to make longer albums and longer songs.
But in the end it still all has to fit onto a vinyl record. That’s the thing. We managed to squeeze it onto one LP because we didn’t want to make it a double album. From a sound-quality perspective, it probably should have been a double album, but really the only difference is that it’s maybe 2dB quieter than most records. And honestly, who’s to say that matters? You just turn it up a little. A big part of that decision was that we didn’t want the record to cost people $70. So much already falls on artists now. We’re somehow expected to fix streaming, fix Spotify, figure out distribution, do all the marketing, create all the content. And then suddenly you turn around and realize that if you make it a double album, it ends up costing people $75. At some point you have to draw a line and make it accessible. So we experimented with fitting it onto one record, and it worked. I was happy about that because I genuinely don’t want people spending that much money on our album.

What’s been striking here in Europe is how excited people were to hear that there’s actually a new Broken Social Scene record coming. It wasn’t just nostalgia, people genuinely didn’t expect new music, so the reaction felt very emotional and immediate. And that made me wonder: when you came back to make this album and put together such an extensive tour, did it also make you reflect on the impact the band has had on indie music since the early 2000s? Do you even think of yourselves in terms of legacy?
We’re from Canada, and in Canada there’s this thing called tall poppy syndrome. As you get older, people start cutting you down a little. I’ve seen it and I’ve experienced it myself. When I was younger, it was all “don’t trust anybody over 30,” and now I see this kind of Canadian ageism happening where people in the industry are already moving on, signing younger acts, trying to stay current and protect their own positions. So hearing you say people in Europe are genuinely excited that we’re back – that’s an honor to hear, because we have been around a long time. And one thing we’re not really supposed to talk about is the impact we actually had when we first came out. I was just in Mexico City for four days, and people kept saying things like, “You changed the game. You changed the system. You broke down barriers.” And when people tell you that, you almost start negotiating with your own memories. You go, “Well, those other bands were there too,” or “Arcade Fire were always going to break through anyway.” People try to hand you this badge of honor, and because I’m Canadian, my instinct is to reject it. But at the same time, I do look back sometimes and think: man, we really did a lot for a lot of people. You’re just not supposed to say that out loud. You’re supposed to stay humble. But one thing I’ve realized while fighting to continue doing this is that you also have to acknowledge your achievements. You have to take ownership of what you’ve done. And what I love most about this record is that it still sounds young and fresh. There’s a youthful energy to it because that’s just who we are. Melody doesn’t have an age. Songs that help people keep going in their lives don’t care about tall poppy syndrome. I think about all of this now because I’m watching these incredible younger bands emerge in real time, and sometimes you forget that you once had that moment too. But because you’re no longer part of “the now,” it can feel distant. Like that Thom Yorke line: just because you feel it doesn’t mean it’s there. A lot of younger generations don’t fully know what you did because it wasn’t online all the time. Back then, your career wasn’t constantly being promoted through social media with “look at us, look at us, here we are again.” There was more restraint in how artists presented themselves when we started. So now, when I sharpen my sword to go back out there again, part of my shield is reminding myself of everything we’ve been through – what we accomplished, how we tried to help other people, all the failures, the mistakes, the years I spent drunk, all of it. Those things become part of your protection. They remind you: we matter, we count, there’s still room for us in music because there’s no one else quite like us. And I don’t mean that in a pompous way. I just mean that every great band eventually becomes its own thing. There are bands where you simply say: that’s who they are, nobody else fills that role. And I think we have a role like that too.

Thank you so much for the interview!