Broken Social Scene

You Forgot It in People (Arts & Crafts)

Comments (0) By Rob Harvilla Thursday, Jul 24 2003

Indie rock's next great hype monstrosity has arrived in the unassuming person of You Forgot It in People, the greatest record ever made by an overly intellectual 10-member Canadian pop collective. It's a fine complement to People's noisy, ethereal pop tunes -- coherent and sweet enough for one-man-with-a-guitar open-mike readings, but here gussied up with expensive guitar pedals and hallucinogenic vocal effects and generally enough technology to pump out five Finding Nemo sequels, though Pixar certainly wouldn't green-light an acoustic guitar ditty titled "I'm Still Your Fag." Then there's the swooning Jeff Buckley piano rocker "Lover's Spit," adding to the alarmingly booming genre of songs about using semen as a skin-care regimen. (Much thanks, Liz Phair.)

All right, it's weird and random and it does the pointy-headed song-title thing ("Late Nineties Bedroom Rock for the Missionaries"). Peoplecan also rock fearlessly and sigh gorgeously, particularly on "Anthems for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl," a bizarre lullaby with banjos, strings, and a heavily distorted female protagonist chanting "Park the car/Drop the phone/Sleep on the floor/Dream about me" over and over and over. Trust us, it's awe-inspiring. Even the throwaway instrumentals and sound collage tunes here are glorious and inspired. Broken Social Scene seems destined to catch both barrels of the indie-rock hype shotgun, with all the starry-eyed praise and vitriolic backlash that comes with it.