Broken Social Scene - Forgiveness Rock Record

During their five-year hiatus, one could assume that Broken Social Scene frontman Kevin Drew had been trimming his garden of friends substantially. On Forgiveness Rock Record, he notes a mere seven collaborators - leaner indeed, compared with the 22 credited on their previously self-titled album. That said, he knows how to pick them, with Metric's Emily Haines, Stars' Amy Milan and the gorgeous Leslie Feist among the survivors. Perhaps ironically, then comes the forgiveness factor.

As the tile suggests, this is a rock and roll record that through its songs explores the emotional process of forgiving, forgetting and moving forward together. From the macro distress of World Sick to Haines' deeply personal Sentimental X's, it's thick with catharsis and human release. It's also the most song-based record the band has even mustered. Where You Forgot It In People was sprawling and tangential, Forgiveness Rock sets it up and knocks it down with steadier structures and that stronger rock inclination.

Co-produced by Tortoise/Sea and Cake drummer John McEntire, it's exactly as we remember their intense aesthetic only sharper, more focused and perhaps better behaved - much like the Broken Social Scene/Sea and Cake contrast. This may alienate those who fell for the granidose and immersing instrumentals of the band's recent history, though the joy here is within our human connection to story. It's a nice thought, and one that's terribly reliant. And after all, who couldn't use a little forgiveness?

Peter Gabriel - Scratch My Back

As the leader of Genesis in the early '70s, Peter Gabriel helped move progressive rock to new levels of theatricality. He was no less ambitious as a solo artist, but he was more subtle in his methods. With his first eponymous solo album in 1977, he began exploring darker, more cerebral territory, incorporating avant-garde, electronic, and worldbeat influences into his music. The record, as well as its two similarly titled successors, established Gabriel as a critically acclaimed cult artist, and with 1982's Security, he began to move into the mainstream; "Shock the Monkey" became his first Top 40 hit, paving the way for his multi-platinum breakthrough So in 1986. Accompanied by a series of groundbreaking videos and the number one single "Sledgehammer," So became a multi-platinum hit, and Gabriel became an international star. Instead of capitalizing on his sudden success, he began to explore other interests, including recording soundtracks and running his company Real World. By the time he returned to pop with 1992's Us, his mass audience had faded away and he spent the remainder of the '90s working on multimedia projects for Real World.

Following his departure from Genesis in 1976, Peter Gabriel began work on the first of three consecutive eponymously titled albums; each record was named Peter Gabriel, he said, as if they were editions of the same magazine. In 1977, his first solo album appeared and became a moderate success due to the single "Solsbury Hill." Another self-titled record followed in 1978, yet received comparatively weaker reviews. Gabriel's third eponymous album proved to be his artistic breakthrough, however. Produced by Steve Lillywhite and released in 1980, the album established Gabriel as one of rock's most ambitious, innovative musicians, as well as one of its most political — "Biko," a song about a murdered antiapartheid activist, became one of the biggest protest anthems of the '80s. "Games Without Frontiers," with its eerie chorus, nearly reached the Top 40.

In 1982, Gabriel released Security, which was an even bigger success, earning positive reviews and going gold on the strength of the startling video for "Shock the Monkey." Just as his solo career was taking off, Gabriel participated in a one-shot Genesis reunion in order to finance his WOMAD — World of Music, Arts and Dance — Festival. WOMAD was designed to bring various world musics and customs to a Western audience, and it soon turned into an annual event, and a live double album was released that year to commemorate the event. As Gabriel worked on his fifth album, he contributed the soundtrack to Alan Parker's 1984 film Birdy. His score was highly praised and it won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes that year. After founding Real World, Inc. — a corporation devoted to developing bridges between technology and multiethnic arts — in 1985, he completed his fifth album, So.

Released in 1986, So became Gabriel's commercial breakthrough, largely because his Stax homage "Sledgehammer" was blessed with an innovative video that combined stop-action animation with live action. So climbed to number two as "Sledgehammer" hit number one, with "Big Time" — featuring a video very similar to "Sledgehammer" — reaching the Top Ten and "In Your Eyes" hitting the Top 30. As So was riding high on the American and British charts, Gabriel co-headlined the first benefit tour for Amnesty International in 1986 with Sting and U2. Another Amnesty International Tour followed in 1988, and the following year, Gabriel released Passion: Music for The Last Temptation of Christ, a collection of instrumentals used in Martin Scorsese's film. Passion was the furthest Gabriel delved into worldbeat, and the album was widely acclaimed, winning the Grammy Award in 1989 for Best New Age Performance. In 1990, he released the hits compilation Shaking the Tree.

Gabriel labored long on the pop-music follow-up to So, finally releasing Us in the spring of 1992. During the recording of Us, Gabriel went through a number of personal upheavals, including a painful divorce, and those tensions manifested themselves on Us, a much darker record than So. For various reasons, not the least of which was the fact that it was released six years after its predecessor, Us wasn't as commercially successful as So, despite positive reviews. Only one single, the "Sledgehammer" knockoff "Steam," reached the Top 40, and the album stalled at platinum sales. In 1993, Gabriel embarked on the most ambitious WOMAD tour to date, touring the United States with a roster including Crowded House, James, and Sinéad O'Connor, with whom he had an on-off romantic relationship. The following year, he released the double-disc Secret World Live, which went gold. Later in 1994, he released the CD-ROM Xplora, one of many projects he developed with Real World. For the rest of the decade, Gabriel concentrated on developing more multimedia projects for the company and working on a new studio album.

Up was released in 2002, a full decade after Gabriel's last studio effort. Dense, cerebral, and often difficult, the record peaked at number nine but failed to sell well in America. It fared slightly better in Canada, where it went gold. He then turned his attention to a host of different projects, although the release of Big Blue Ball — a compilation of collaborative performances recorded at Real World Studios during the '90s — helped placate fans while Gabriel focused his energies elsewhere. He eventually returned to the studio for another album, Scratch My Back, which featured orchestral covers of songs originally performed by Radiohead, Arcade Fire, Paul Simon, David Bowie, and others.

What We All Come To Need

With Pelican having recently jumped ship from Hydrahea Records to Southern Lord (the current spiritual home of all things slow and heavy), the question of whether they would return to their more sludge/doom-oriented roots, as opposed to the more classic rock-inspired sounds of City of Echoes, hangs heavy over the group's fourth album, What We All Come To Need.


This album though isn't a step backwards for Pelican. Nor it is really a step forwards. Besides the addition of vocals for the first time (which we'll get to in a minute), What We All Come To Need is pretty much business as usual for the Chicago four-piece. The songs here are a mixture of the shorter, more traditionally-structured pieces on City of Echoes and the more length explorations of 2005's The Fire In Our Throats. Guitarists Trevor de Brauw and Laurent Schroeder-Lebec have by now perfected their intuitive interplay, balancing thick-skinned metallic riffs with glistening melodies, while the fraternal rhythm section of Bryan and Larryr Herweg provides a simple but effective framework within which they can move about. Familiar, then, but still highly enjoyable.


And then, on closer Final Breath, comes the album's one true surprise - an appearance by Shiner/The Life And Times vocalist Allen Epley. It's a risky move, as instrumental bands adding vocals to the mix have a tendency to go horribly wrong. But Epley somehow finds a sympathetic space within the song; his voice works more as another instrument than any kind of focal/vocal point, there by swiftly dodging potential disaster.


5/10