The Canadian indie rock band sorts through a largely subdued grab bag of material on this career-spanning set, highlighted by offbeat experiments and homespun, intimate moments.
Broken Social Scene have been soundtracking intimate firsts since the internet was a little baby and made a lot of noise when you turned it on. For over two decades, the Canadian collective has written anthemic, heart-on-your-sleeve indie rock songs that make you want to sit on your crush’s lap at a house party or shotgun a beer in a cornfield. For fans of a certain age, their work has become synonymous with being a teen: Lorde is one of those fans, and she memorably interpolated “Lover’s Spit” into “Ribs,” making an adolescent anthem of her own. Old Dead Young, the band’s new career-spanning B-sides and rarities collection, won’t necessarily give you the same ecstatic lift of their more beloved material. For the most part, these 14 tracks are a pretty subdued listen. They’re not the band’s best songs, and most of the record isn’t particularly memorable. Old Dead Young is best appreciated as the first retrospective from a band whose music is already all about self-mythologizing and looking back at the past.
Despite being essentially a grab bag of ephemera, Old Dead Young plays like an actual album, sequenced like any Broken Social Scene record, shifting between styles and collaborators. Opener “Far Out,” originally from a pre-order EP released in anticipation of 2010’s Forgiveness Rock Record, is a delicate ambient interstitial, twisting and turning like a toy ballerina in a jewelry box. It segues into the 2001 track “Do the 95,” where Kevin Drew’s vocals feel like baseballs being flung at you from inside a batting cage. The mood grows more hushed around the album’s midpoint. “This House Is on Fire,” an outtake from Forgiveness Rock Record, evokes being stuck inside during a snowstorm. It’s so tender it’s almost a bit twee. “National Anthem of Nowhere,” a Broken Social Scene version of a song written for Andrew Whiteman’s Apostle of Hustle side project, is just as chill, but not nearly as schmaltzy. It’s calm and searching.
The collection’s latter half features its strongest and most complicated material. “Stars and Spit,” from 2006, is loud and jangly, with pops of synth, scuzzed-out guitars, and cavernous percussion. It’s a mashup of “Stars and Sons” and “Lover’s Spit” made by producer David Newfield and originally released on a 7" single from 2006. While definitely a bit gimmicky, the song is also oddly compelling. “Until It’s Dead” is equally experimental but far more muted. It integrates sampling with cool-toned, krauty guitars and synths. “All My Friends,” meanwhile, is a beautiful but sardonic song about having friends in magazines and telling “little lies” while having “massive dreams.” Most of the record feels up-close and personal, but “All My Friends” is so homespun and raw it feels particularly intimate.
These songs feel like an old photo album of Polaroids and disposable camera pictures from the band’s formative years, even if none of them feel all that essential. They’re less varnished and intoxicating than the songs that would make the final cut on a studio album. But that’s the appeal: Sometimes it’s the outtakes—the photos where everyone is blinking and has beady red eyes—that feel the most candid, the best representation of the past, decades out.
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