You Forgot It in People

Broken Social Scene | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (June 3, 2003)
• Original Release Date: 2003
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Arts & Crafts
• ASIN: B00008RBJU
• Also Available in: Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (100 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #37,860 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

160 of 178 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pitchforkmedia Review 9.2 out of 10.0, June 11, 2003

By 

treblekicker "treblekicker" (Houston, TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: You Forgot It in People (Audio CD)

I've been listening to this disc for months on repeat-- sometimes just this disc for days-- but it wasn't until I began doing research for this review that it began to make sense how a band like this could materialize from out of nowhere with such a powerful, affecting album. I knew from the liners that the group has ten members (fifteen if you include guests); what I didn't know was that all of them have been wandering from band to band within the wildly experimental Toronto music scene for years, or that they all came together from groups like Stars, Do Make Say Think, Treble Charger, A Silver Mt. Zion, and Mascott-- miraculously with the unified goal of making pop music. One of its members told a Toronto weekly that "we'd already made our art-house albums... the whole ideology of trying to write an actual four-minute pop song was completely new to so many of us."

Who could have imagined it would come so easily? This record explodes with songs after song of endlessly replayable, perfect pop. For proof, pick virtually any track: The sound barrier-bursting anthem "Almost Crimes", the subdued, gossamer "Looks Just like the Sun", the Dinosaur Jr.-tinted "Cause = Time", or the shimmering, Jeff Buckley-esque "Lover's Spit". And there's plenty more where that came from. How about the chugging guitar-pop of "Stars and Sons", which spins a distant, churning keyboard drone beneath the best moments of Spoon's Girls Can Tell and punctuates it with a barrage of percussive hand-claps. Or "Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl" which showcases Emily Haines' melting alto caught in a beautiful, cyclical refrain and modified by about a hundred vocal effects while violins float atop subtle banjo plucking and cascading toms. Or "KC Accidental", which blasts searing, super-melodic guitar, a drumkit alternately galloping and relentlessly beaten, and an impenetrable wall of accelerating orchestration, before crash-landing into a deliquescent pop lullaby.

The band's aforementioned art-house pedigree goes a long way toward making You Forgot It In People more than just another fantastic pop record: One of its foremost traits is its airy spaciousness. On many of its tracks, the sounds seem to resonate indefinitely, as if played at top volume on a Greenland hillside and recorded miles away. Simultaneously, the album is dense with the baroque instrumentation of all fifteen players, each part beautifully arranged, and all of them bleeding together in perfect harmonic unison. Chalk one up for heretofore unknown producer David Newfeld, who isolates the song's key instruments upfront in the mix, and captures all others as delicate nuances-- an expansive, pillowy bed of ethereal violins, muted trumpets and flutes to softly support the traditional guitars, bass and drums.
Rock critic Michael Goldberg recently speculated that what makes music fanatics thirst for the obscure is the desire to discover music that is "uncontaminated by the commerce machine." This, he says, is the reason we cling to the abstract and unmarketable, the outlandish and abrasive. And yet, this is also the guy whose favorite album of last year was the painfully vacuous adult-contempo masterflop by Beth Gibbons & Rustin Man. Granted, not all of us share Goldberg's taste for sub-folk cheddar, but there's something like that record in each of our collections. So, how can there be room for both challenging, forward-thinking music and straight-up accessibility?

Well, we're not total [*] right? We can kick back with Ekkehard Ehlers or Electric Light Orchestra-- there's inherent greatness in both. But the holy grail for people like us is the record that combines outright experimentation and strong hooks, something that engages us mentally while appealing to the instincts that draw us toward pop immediacy. Some of the best records ever have been ones that put these two seemingly disparate elements together-- and you can go as recent as The Notwist's Neon Golden or as far back as Sgt. Pepper's (and probably farther, if you want). This kind of music shouldn't be hard to come by; it's just that not many artists are able to perfect that balance.

Broken Social Scene have, and even made it seem effortless while they were at it. I wish I could convey to you just how perfectly this record pulls off that balancing act, how incredibly catchy and hummable these songs are, despite their refusal to resort to oversimplicity or blatant pandering. I wish I could convey how they've made just exactly the kind of pop record that stands the test of time, and how its ill-advised packaging and shudder-inducing bandname seem so infinitesimal after immersing yourself in the music. And I hate to end this saying, "You just have to hear it for yourself." But oh my god, you do. You just really, really do.

-Ryan Schreiber, February 3rd, 2003

42 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wow, October 5, 2003

By 

Blackberries (PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: You Forgot It in People (Audio CD)

In my opinion, You Forgot It in People is the best underground record of the year. Rabid rock anthems are fused with brilliantly laid-back, coasting tunes that together make one of the most compatible and delightful albums I've heard in a long while. A few other reviewers covered the Broken Social Scene's members routes, but bear in mind, this cd sounds nothing like their other band's recordings. You Forgot It In People is a spectacular aberation, something I certainly can't draw comparisons to. I'm a big fan of richly textured songs that build up and break out into crushing rock outs. The bulk of this recording is made up of songs just like that. Songs that have you nodding your head the whole way through, but at a certain point, just explode into phenomenal rock excursions. In addition to the heartpounding tracks, BSS added a few other smooth, flowing tracks (Looks Just Like the Sun and Pacific Theme) that are really great as well. My favorite songs on the record are Cause=Time, Stars and Sons, Almost Crimes and Anthems For A Seventeen Year Old Girl. I recommend this to all.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best album of the decade (so far), August 7, 2004

By 

Omari Wise (LA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: You Forgot It in People (Audio CD)

This is simply the greatest pop record of the decade to date; it's just a total embarrassment of musical riches. There are a few obvious influences here (Jeff Buckley, My Bloody Valentine, Sonic Youth and New Order, to name a few), but the end result is simply unlike anything else. "Symphonic noise-pop" might be the best description for the music produced by this amazing collective, which is composed of members of veteran Canadian art-rock bands such as KC Accidental and Do Make Say Think, as well as the pop groups Metric and Stars.

Perhaps the most astonishing thing about this album is the way that it manages to be extremely immediate (songs like "KC Accidental" and "Stars And Sons" are basically the sonic equivalent of an amphetamine rush), yet it reveals numerous subtleties upon repeated listens. The gorgeous production brings a great deal of detail to the fore, like the gentle banjo floating under the hypnotic vocals in "Anthems For A Seventeen Year-Old Girl," or the silvery guitar fills during the operatic conclusion of "Cause = Time."

I picked this up six months ago and have probably listened to it every single day since; the euphoric first side evokes the first rays of sunshine flooding your bedroom in the morning, while the languid second side is perfect to drift off to sleep to. You Forgot It In People is an instant classic and an absolutely essential purchase for anyone that's even remotely interested in thoughtful, well-crafted pop music.