Indie rock staples the New Pornographers and Broken Social Scene each recently released their first album in years without much fanfare. While their last respective releases were anything but disappointing, it points to the rapid pace of the Internet-run indie world to consider how over-the-hill it feels to desperately want to praise this release; mostly because you have to miss the exhilaratingly vibrant indie rock benchmarks set on 2002's You Forgot It In People and their eponymous follow-up in 2005. But in more than one way BSS are showing the effects of their age, or perhaps just the loose nature of the supergroup, through compromised results. Where there were fluid melodies walking you down a beach and introducing oceans of cymbals and fuzz guitar to swim in, there are now quirks and affections hidden in walls of sound that are too often more transparent than they are shoegaze.
There's ""World Sick,"" where listeners are presented with a peace-love hippie message from frontman Kevin Drew standing on a pulpit of layered and often weighted in lament riffs and waves of cymbal splashes. At almost seven minutes, it opens the album as its centerpiece and earns its length with slow-building and deliberate walls of engaging shoegaze-effects that ebb and flow. Yet its comforting waves come from the simple progressions in dynamics, not some inherently mesmerizing dreaminess that only comes from a simple song's ability to lure your ears in every time and take command of your limbs in a rhythmic manner.
From there, reminders of this maturing tendency interrupt the ride. ""Chase Scene"" is a little too Tarantino-esqe in its frenetic, unsettling pace and flourishes. ""Art House Director"" is uncomfortably peppy and uses saxophones with too much of a teen-pop feel to come from indie rock vets. Some investments need nourishment to become fruitful. ""Meet Me in the Basement"" is a play on Fang Island's Andrew WK-take on indie rock from earlier this year. Only with how stereotypical this song sounds for BSS, that reference really puts the egg before the chicken and notes an influence for some newer guys on the block. But even still, some tracks are memorable; ""Forced to Love"" carries almost a little too much anthemic rock accessibility, the same goes for ""Texaco Bitches"" (only with ""Forced to Love"" it's something of a backhanded compliment) and ""Sentimental X's"" has that trendy dreaminess to lure you in, and its cleverly playful lyrics make it just as rewarding as anything they've ever made.
Although Forgiveness Rock Record never reaches the relaxed vigor of ""KC Accidental"" or the sly, but sheen innovation of ""7/4 (Shoreline),"" it does not really disappoint. To be blunt, it pales in comparison to You Forgot It In People and lacks much of the charm of Broken Social Scene, but it carries the same personality, only not as attractive and smooth. So while we want to love the new little quirks, the tempt of the first two loves from BSS win out in the heat of the music-picking moment. Otherwise it's a little too much like being reminded of a past trend that you really fucking enjoyed having around, like Skip-It. Luckily, that doesn't mean this effort is worth neglecting in the whole scope, it's just that you have to really pay attention to what you're doing in order to get the payoff—like Skip-It before they invented the counter on that ball. And with where there at in their career, especially considering how busy and independent the members are outside of BSS, that's not too shabby.
