Broken Social Scene - Remember The Humans

On Remember The Humans, Broken Social Scene's first new studio album since 2017, the iconic band returns to the producer who first helped them discover their inimitable sound: David Newfeld - who helmed Broken Social Scene's breakthrough You Forgot It in People (2002) and its gargantuan follow-up Broken Social Scene (2005). And, the timing feels uncannily right. We live in an era that is overstimulated, and yet simultaneously hollowed out; deeply connected, but marked by a profound sense of dislocation. Remember The Humans rings out as a quiet alarm: a reminder not to forget the fragile, analog beings at the center of all the noise.

Twelve new songs enact this tension across Remember The Humans, rather than simply describing it. Their arrangements are dense and enveloping - a lattice of horns, guitars, voices, and electronics - yet melody always remains sovereign, refusing to be swallowed by the sheer sound. When the music drifts towards abstraction, a grounding bass line arrives to anchor the listener, reminding us always that there are human hands on the controls and that, however artful, this is still rock and roll.

As ever, Broken Social Scene operates less as a band than as a community and songs evolve by ceding control to whoever can best carry them forward in the moment. Kevin Drew may be the designated driver, but collaborators including Feist, Hannah Georgas, and Lisa Lobsinger step into the foreground throughout the record, shaping songs with a sense of collective authorship that has always defined the group’s ethos.

For many bands, there are long stretches when nothing seems to happen, at least from the outside. Years pass, the culture shifts, and the audience waits for a signal, unsure whether the silence marks exhaustion, reinvention, or simply life happening offstage. For Broken Social Scene, they surface when the conditions are right, and fall quiet when they aren't. Yet their silence never feels like absence - it feels like building pressure, as if the next surge of sound is assembling itself offstage, gathering mass, waiting for the right moment to break. 2026 is such a moment.