Broken Social Scene Presents Kevin Drew: "tbtf"

The most common criticism leveled at Broken Social Scene's eponymous follow-up album was that what were fundamentally solid songs were buried under a production paradigm that privileged whooshing noises and weight over accommodating existing sounds. For their many members, Broken Social Scene still know how to use space effectively, and that not insignificant skill didn't survive the recording process.

So when BSS's principal songwriter preps an album sans-collective and Flood-in-training producer David Newfeld, it's not unreasonable to expect something stripped, at least down to the level of conventional production. And for the most part, this simple two part pop song delivers just that kind of unfussy listen. Drew's surprisingly roughshod voice, cracking and scratching as it hits higher pitches, is adolescent in both sonic and lyrical tone, imputing more of the same insular melodrama to which BSS fans have happily become accustomed. When the chorus comes in and the drummer simply switches over his ride cymbal, that it's not two drummers made to sound like fourteen as a cataclysmic fuzz and wash ascends from beneath the crust of the earth is a nice change.

Having heard the rest of the album, I'll say that not all of Spirit If. benefits from this same simplicity; it might be mistaken for ambitious if it were not mostly more of the same pop music made too much of. But other than the arbitrary canker of noise that peppers a single bar of "tbtf," the song is a perfect leadoff single, a return to the basics and reminder of why we put up with all the pretensions of these trust fund philosophers: it's hard to dislike someone who can write a song this tuneful.