Score: 8/10
At this point, I’m no longer surprised about things like a new Broken Social Scene release meeting with exactly zero hype or media attention. Actually, over the past couple of decades, I’ve been on a lively regimen of heartbreak stemming from the world wielding a sort of blanket disrespect for my music, whether it’s indie rock, DJ beats that my hometown finds “gay” or “pu**y,” or what have you. The fact of the ruling class treating these Toronto indie veterans like they’re The Bloodhound Gang really isn’t exorbitantly shocking to me.
Also not too surprising, upon an initial release of the first few tracks of this album, is that it blends a robust, full-band mix (see you, Dandy Warhols) with complete original eclecticism in sound. That is, you guessed it, this album is of all its own sonic fabric, something that should hardly come as a surprise, given this band’s incessant, tenacious quests for uncharted musical territories over the last three decades.
The Wikipedia page didn’t offer band personnel, but evident on the surface, I suppose, are vocals alternating freshly between male and female. One of the women performing here is Hannah Georgas, who kind of, sure, sounds like every other girls who sings in this band — very serene and pretty, a melodic rock canary to play her position and refrain from ostentatious attention-grabbing. The results, on track two “Only the Good I Keep”; are lush and idyllic and also lend themselves to impressions of Remember the Humans as a full-bodied, memorable band installment.
On the whole, this album resembles the band’s last effort, Hug of Thunder (2017), in that it induces a sort of dream-like state which makes it hard to differentiate, stylistically or artistically, one track from the other. Amidst a bunch of gems, though, “And I Think of You” seems to make a singular name for itself, on which a scaled-back, almost ambient drum beat allows for magnification of some personal, poignant lyrics like “I think of you when the blood isn’t right… I think of you all the time”. It’s especially marked as an anomaly following a string of enjoyable but sort of rhythmically similar tracks, like a picturesque moment of stepping back and taking in the stature of your project as a whole, whether than just tending to its rudiments.
It’s hard to believe, but at the exact moment when I decided for sure that “The Briefest Kiss” was instrumental, the female vocals entered, like an astonishing revelation, and, more importantly, evidence that there’s still human life on planet Earth, of course. I guess, in general, you could pinpoint this ability to surprise as a key component making this band great and timeless — these moments of moxie and originality have a way of emanating to the fore of their creations and superseding what might come across as ostentatious or overproduced, synth-heavy mixes, to some myopic listeners.
Things tend to thin out a little bit on side B, with, similar to Blur’s The Ballad of Darren, just an excess of slow, soft numbers, the types of things which, like “This is a Low”; work much better when adjacent to several disco numbers (“Magic America”; “Clover over Dover”; “London Loves”; et. al.). Ultimately, though, a typically mind-blowing approach to instrumentation, including things like oboe, trumpet, treated piano and drum machine (and of course a lot of treated guitar), and just enough genuineness and plurality in vocals, combine to make Remember the Humans a success, in addition to being a much-needed musical draught for the indie landscape in 2026, and, most importantly, a failure to manifest as the apocalyptic concept album suggested by the title.
..
<script async src=“https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-5127494401132808”
crossorigin=“anonymous”></script>
..
<!– Google Tag Manager –>
<script>(function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({‘gtm.start’:
new Date().getTime(),event:’gtm.js’});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],
j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!=‘dataLayer’?’&l=‘+l:’’;j.async=true;j.src=
‘https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id=‘+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);
})(window,document,’script’,’dataLayer’,’GTM-5KV22KW’);</script>
<!– End Google Tag Manager –>
<!– Google Tag Manager (noscript) –>
<noscript><iframe src=“https://www.googletagmanager.com/ns.html?id=GTM-5KV22KW”
height=“0” width=“0” style=“display:none;visibility:hidden”></iframe></noscript>
<!– End Google Tag Manager (noscript) –>