7/10

Forgiveness Rock Record is magnificent, except for its dodgy beginning. If I were part of the 1,458-piece group, I might petition that “World Sick” is unnecessarily long, scrap “Chase Scene” completely and replace it with a longer “Meet me in the Basement”, and maybe hide “Forced to Love” somewhere between tracks 7 and 12. Looking past the fact that I usually skip the first four songs, this is a record that really, really rocks. It’s not quite as go-to as You Forgot It In People or epic as their self-titled album, but it’s worth a damn. Although I’m saddened by the lack of Leslie Feist, “All to All” with Amy Millan of Stars is smooth and airy enough to tide me over.

Overall, although it’s still detectable in some places (especially in “Meet Me in the Basement”), Forgiveness Rock Record is a step away from Broken Social Scene’s traditional sound. It was supposedly written mostly by way of full-band jam sessions, oriented around forgiveness and finding resolutions to issues written about in past BSS songs. Although the songs seem more single-driven rather than retaining BSS’ familiar continuous flow of alt-rock melody, the upbeat songs are more fiery and the slow tunes even gentler than before. This prevented me from making a strong connection to the album as a whole piece, which I’m used to with BSS, but I like it regardless.

The band is currently touring, and I highly recommend you drop everything to go see them perform. I was lucky to catch their opening show in San Francisco and it was almost a transcendental experience. No bullshit. It was amazing.