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

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However, listening to any of the elements separately, save maybe "KC Accidental" or "Sons and Stars," it's hard to think there's anything to this band. They're either restrained or off-kilter instrumentals or more muted, circular pieces ala "Anthems for a 17 Year Old Girl" or "Looks Just Like the Sun"

Taken together as a constant whole, it makes far more sense, ala Primal Scream's XTRMNTR. The instrumentals are pretty creative fair, although not on the level of a, say, Flaming Lips instrumental, and they give a nice flow to the quasi-prog rock, quasi-Verve style sound. Few songs have any consistency to them, but it's wild to hear the random turns and double-backs that they take, almost as if they're actively trying to elude one's grasp. "Almost Crimes" is a fine example of this, first with a muted piano, then a breakneck drum beat and almost 60's sounding refrain, then high female harmonies that then progress to a jazzy horn bridge. It's a treat to be listening to something that doesn't dumb it down for the listener, and leaves a bit of the thrill of discovery intact and doesn't answer all its own questions.

The album's lyrics, whatever there are that are discernable, are playful, subtle, probably reflections of passionate love in their disdain for boundaries and implied rebelliousness. "We all want to f___ the cause," one line goes in "Cause = Time", a slogan for Romeo and Juliet if there ever was one.

Granted, there are a number of moments that fail on the record- it seems "Stars and Sons" for all its catchiness could've concluded a little more tightly, and maybe there's a little bit too much instrumental haziness for what is inferred to be the combined work of a (fairly sizable) band. But as a whole, which unfortunately few records can really be viewed as nowadays, this is a stunning piece of work, and is enough to justify a heap a praise a hundred times greater than the one currently piled on top of them. You won't sleep a wink.

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