Customer Reviews

Feel Good Lost

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Broken Social Scene are incredible. With one solid masterpiece under their belt ("You Forgot It In People"), an excellent B-sides/rarities collection ("Bee Hives"), and a Best Alternative Album Award from the Junos, BSS seem nearly unstoppable. People SHOULD be excited for this band: "You Forgot ..." is quite possibly THE quintessential post-millenial indie rock album (a modern-day "Slanted & Enchanted", anyone?). Who can't forget the raging guitars that opened "KC Accidental", the superb groove of "Pacific Theme", or the genuinely sincere "I Wanna Be Your (...)"? These are all minor masterpieces in their own accord. "Bee Hives" will tide poeple over until their next album, but for real crate diggers, there's the album that got everything started: "Feel Good Lost"

The biggest err one can make is expecting this album to be anything like "Forgot". If anything, it's quite the opposite - no barn-storming guitars, no extreme pace changes, and hell, no vocals! This album has the pure and simple goal of hitting atmosphere - and it does its job incredibly well.

This is an emotional album, pure and simple. Each piece evokes a feeling or mood inside of you - sometimes you just have to wait until the right moment. This album is the soundtrack to your own self-made Volkswagon commercial - driving a road at night with the sunroof down; these are the songs that are in the background. Take the fuzzed-out atmosphere guitar of "Passport Radio" as a good guiding light for the eve. The drums decide to want to dance around a little bit on "Alive in 85", but something like the near-tribal "Stomach Song" comes into play, and your mindset is changed yet again. The band finds melodies in simple-yet-beautiful guitar lines, like a downtempo Explosions in the Sky. Throughout the album, a particular string sample does occasionally find its way into the songs, as if to act as a unifying theme - it never fully materializes, but provides a glimmer of familiarity in the sometimes vast-instrumental landscape that lies before you.

Every listener will identify with a particular section of the album or a particular song, which leads to my personal highlight of the album, the mere 3:06-long "Guilty Cubicles" - a lullaby of a guitar line that creates a feeling of desired love and nights where getting home is only a secondary priority. It's a beautiful highlight to an already-beautiful album.

By all means, this isn't something you absorb in one listen. It will take awhile for the "Forgot It"-fan to get used to this slower and dreamier incarnation of the band, but for those who can lay expectations aside and accept the album for what it is - you have a new soundtrack for you life. Enjoy.

Well to be honest you can't lose yourself in all parts of the CD, and more's the pity. This CD is on the brink of masterpiece that You Forgot It In People achieved, but there are some tracks that ruin the beautiful and ethereal atmosphere the first half establishes and only resumes near the end. My ratings:

1. I Slept With Bonhomme At The CBC: 9/10, mmm what a way to start it, beautiful, mesmorizing, enchanting, etc. etc.

2. Guilty Cubicles: 9/10, it continues, this track blends flawlessly with the previous and continues the beauty.

3. Love And Mathematics: 11/10! Yes it goes off my own scale, my favorite jam song ever, it's like a drum fiesta with guitars swooping and diving around the core drum beats! Best track on the album by far!

4. Passport Radio: 8.5/10, dreamy vocals, dreamy guitars, it's all-around... what's the word... dreamy!

5. Alive In 85: 9/10, very catchy, makes me want to bounce, quite a nice poppy feel to it you can't help but like.

6. Prison Province: 5/10, yuck! I mean... why? They were on a role, they were kicking ass, but this song is the first of the "bad half" of the CD.

7. Blues For Uncle Gibb: 6.5/10, very dark, and not very pleasant. I somewhat enjoy the haunting hermonica, but the rest? No.

8. Stomach Song: 6/10, this song sounds like it emerged from the stomach, so in a way it's fitting. It's grating and annoying.

9. Massbroker: 7.5/10, cheer up, things are getting a little better! While the violin squeeks like a dying animal at the beginning, it gets better toward the end.

10. Feel Good Lost: 7/10, I love the name, but as title tracks go this is just too weird and too short.

11. Last Place: 9.5/10, yes, back in action! This 8-minute-long track is amazing, your ultimate roadtrip song, it makes me think of rolling plains of grass.

12. Cranley's Gonna Make It: 9.5/10, triumphant finish, one of the catchiest songs on the album, and I love how it ends so breathlessly, just like you feel after this album's rollercoaster of sounds concludes.

If it weren't for the dark and dreary middle of this CD (which some could argue is necessary, as it completes the voyage this CD takes you on), I would rate the album a 5. As it is, I treasure the truly great songs off this album as some of the best instrumental rock songs ever made, and I am so happy Broken Social Scene is only continuing to get better with time.

"Feelgood Lost" was the first Broken Social Scene album, but their second "You Forgot It In People" was what really broke this eclectic, smooth band into the limelight. It's less polished and more raw, but the ambience and richness are definitely there.

It starts with the slow, shimmery "I Slept With Bonhomme At The CBC," before shifting into the steady, unexceptional "Guilty Cubicles." A more rock-edged sound appears (the slow-burning "Love and Mathematics"), along with eerie songs (the experimental-sounding "Passport Radio" and too-quiet "Blues for Uncle Gibb") and melodious pop (the stately "Alive in 85," bouncy "Cranley's Gonna Make It").

The sound of "Feelgood Lost" is a lot less polished and complex than their second album. But don't be deceived -- this is no demo or B-side album. It's just a group that hadn't fully come into bloom yet. There's rock, there's pop, there's even the murmuring, sweeping experimental soud of "Passport Radio," which sounds like the soundtrack to a surrealist computer-animated movie.

Violins, keyboard and synthesizers meld together seamlessly from the very start, with faintly strumming guitars and steady percussion underneath it. There's even a bit of fuzz guitar at the end of "Love and Mathetmatics." The funny thing about Broken Social Scene is how the music all seems to meld together into one big shimmering whole, especially in the slower, softer numbers.

Sweet, silvery atmospheric pop is the staple of Broken Social Scene, and their first album lives up magnificently to that. It's a bit rougher, but the spirit of it is still there. "Feelgood Lost" isn't lost anymore...

i don't really want to draft my personal thoughts on each song, as a few of the reviewers have already hit that mark.. i simply want to expres my love for this album and broken social scene as a band.. if you are into indie, and chill instrumental/experimental type music.. check out this album.. its not perfect, but the first 5 songs, and last 4 songs are more than enough to earn this album a rating of 5 solid stars.. give it a listen, it's beautiful.

I actually like this CD more than their critically acclaimed follow-up. The trippy psychadelic post-rock of 'Feel Good Lost' combines Sea And Cake or Tortoise with the orchestral rock of Godspeed You Black Emperor. Apparently this was a low budget, low produced effort, but the chemistry of unlikely musical ideas is what makes this work. More raw and lush, less airplay friendly, but shows the bursting of creative ideas resulting from a new collaboration.

2 guys in the bedroom recording lush, warm, sleepy post-rocky sounds (tinged with a bit of glitchwork) on an 8-track. Best tracks are saved for the end: the veerrry lurvely "Last Place" and "Cranley's Gonna Make It". The middle portion meanders a bit. If you like Tortoise, Sea and The Cake, Mogwai, etc.

Other reviews on this album immediately reference YFIP and talk about how Feel Good Lost was just a necessary stepping stone on their path to glory, but those reviews are wrong. This IS their glory and everything since pales in comparison. I heard YFIP a while ago, well, I heard Stars and Sons on a mixed CD and was intrigued so I picked it up and gave it a listen and I was in no way blown away. Stars and Cause=Time are indeed priceless gems, but that disc, I'm afraid, will take it's rightful place in the bland sea of indistinguishability that is popular music, sometimes rising to the crest of a wave, but ultimately being crushed under everything. What Feel Good Lost does, what gives it buoyancy, is it travels back to the 60's not in sound, but in attitude, challenging the pop music standards with creative and imaginative twists to the norms, or, in some cases, the complete rejection of conventions altogether. Such is Feel Good Lost, an album that begins with high, whiny violins over a very satisfying base line. Guilty cubicles does a nice job in the segue, keeping the theme of provactive base but trading the violins for some very mellow guitar plucking and perfectly juxtaposed electronic noise- somehow making the hideous dial-up modem misery into an intelligent contributor to a good song. Track 3, Love and Math, continues to follow the meandering bass line except, on this number, the electric guitar makes its first significant contribution, taking the melody load off of the bass for a little while (which refuses to go away). Also featured is a repetitive, up beat drum rhythm that you wouldn't expect to fit with such a perfectly easy song. Passport Radio is what Love and Math would sound like from a strata of the atmosphere only David Bowie or an acid-fueled Grateful Dead would dare go. Lyrics make their first appearance and they sound like an angel singing through a vacuum as semi-trucks drive by, bringing along with them that whoosh everyone knows and hates but has to admit sounds particularly good on this track. Alive in '85 remembers new wave and proves it with the hot hot beat any good synth and drum machine would pump out in a discoteque. It also features what I believe to be a cello and a duet of brass instruments. Prison Province triumphantly ressurects the bass in a haunting solo which reverberates like the signature whistle of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. It repeats, lulling the listener into a trance, forgetting it was even listening, but the brilliantly placed Blues for Uncle Gibb snaps the listener right back into uncomfortable attention. American-Indian style drum beats that bounce from right to left in the stereo mix, establishing the atmosphere for a ceremonial manhood rite as an adolescent leaves the comfort of the tribe's drum circle, wandering into the wilderness for a vision. Meanwhile, the plucked strings of an electric guitar give the track continuity with the album, even as a harmonica sweetens the pot and further's the track's theme. Stomach Song makes music with an obscure round of sorts as crowd noise provides a cluttered pallet over which two particular voices weave in and out of the obscurity to talk and echo nonsense phrases, accompanied all the while by evenly played, very electric guitar. This is perhaps the vision of the young man, difficult to interpret but beautiful and heartfelt nonetheless. Mossbraker brings back the drums of Gibb, this time sounding the enthusiastic welcome of the newest member to the tribe. A solo violinist speaks up, not playing notes, per se, but singing a sweet and uneven tune like the vocals of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!, but slower. The driving force at this point is a bass that sounds like Primus' Les Claypool's if he had a glass of red wine, smoked a pound of grass, then downed half a bottle of vicatin. The Title Track is where repetition begins, returning to ideas earlier in the work and reiterating them, perhaps more eloquently. Feel Good Lost is certainly the most delicate of the songs, and it is a nice bridge between Moss and Last Place. Last Place is not in fact last, but second to it, and it accelerates the pace with the same electronic influenced style of 85. As the 8 minute song progresses, it slowly but progressively builds the wall of sound that backs the beat. It doesn't get anywhere near the obscure levels of the climax of the Decemberists' I Was Meant for The Stage, but the idea is kind of the same. The last track, Cranley's Gonna Make It, might be the most conventional on the album. It still lacks lyrics, and has some interesting instruments (like a very Sufjan banjo part), but the polyrythmic consistency gives it a natural, comfortable feel. It's pretty upbeat, and I would liken it to the end of a long road trip where the van is finally rolling back into the driveway, and you are just so damn excited to see what you know and trust again. On the whole, the journey is a masterpiece. YFIP is a very good piece of music, better than most to be sure, but its retrograde into conventional song form is truly a step away from the brilliance they achieved in Feel Good Lost. Few works sound as good as it, but none sound LIKE it.

"Feelgood Lost" was the first Broken Social Scene album, although their second "You Forgot It In People" was what really broke this eclectic, smooth band into the limelight. The debut less polished and more raw, but the ambience and richness are definitely there.

It starts with the slow, shimmery "I Slept With Bonhomme At The CBC," before shifting into the steady, unexceptional "Guilty Cubicles." A more rock-edged sound appears (the slow-burning "Love and Mathematics"), along with eerie songs (the experimental-sounding "Passport Radio" and too-quiet "Blues for Uncle Gibb") and melodious pop (the stately "Alive in 85," bouncy "Cranley's Gonna Make It").

The sound of "Feelgood Lost" is a lot less polished and complex than their second album. But don't be deceived -- this is no demo or B-side album. It's just a group that hadn't fully come into bloom yet. There's rock, there's pop, there's even the murmuring, sweeping experimental soud of "Passport Radio," which sounds like the soundtrack to a surrealist computer-animated movie.

Violins, keyboard and synthesizers meld together seamlessly from the very start, with faintly strumming guitars and steady percussion underneath it. There's even a bit of fuzz guitar at the end of "Love and Mathetmatics." The funny thing about Broken Social Scene is how the music all seems to meld together into one big shimmering whole, especially in the slower, softer numbers.

Sweet, silvery atmospheric pop is the staple of Broken Social Scene, and their first album lives up magnificently to that. It's a bit rougher, but the spirit of it is still there. "Feelgood Lost" isn't lost anymore...

I purchased YFIIP before this and it blew me away. The mix of experimental and pop tunes was fresh and very well received by me.

I picked Feel Good Lost up a few months ago and I find myself wanting to listen to it far more often than YFIIP.

Both are great albums, and both are far different. There's no real lyrics or vocals on this whole album. Most all of it is instumental , and it's wonderful.

In my opinion this album is better than their second release, YFIIP...although both are essential. Feel Good Lost is more consistent and overall a better album.

Debut for BSS is essentially an album of instrumentals, spacious and ambient and explorative, with words appearing at small and sporadic intervals (and even then, it can be difficult to hear/understand). As such, it's a very strong candidate for moody background music, floating effortlessly and, well, feeling good lost. As the songs move from one to the next, it's easy to tell that the band was definitely trying for a complete album, but a lack of crowning moments mars its success. It rarely feels as alive as it should be. And since it serves as background music, it wastes the intimacy of close inspection, which it may crave but doesn't deserve.

Early moments shine brightest: the low-key swirl of "Passport Radio," the rise and fall of the guitars on "Guilty Cubicles." But an interlude like "Prison Province" adds nothing and cries out its lack of necessity. Long workouts like "Blues For Uncle Gibb" and "Last Place" have mixed results; the latter, especially, drones on for so long that it starts becoming boring long before it fades out. In the end, musical monotony brings this down to a mostly solid release and little more. It would be another two years before the band would be truly noticed and actually earn their endless accolades. But for a first effort, it scores enough to warrant a purchase.

Best cuts: "Love and Mathematics," "Passport Radio," "Guilty Cubicles," "Mossbraker," "Cranley's Gonna Make It," "I Slept With the Bonhomme At the CBC," "Stomach Song"