Broken Social Scene Reveal New Album, Summer Tour Plans

Canadian indie rock icons Broken Social Scene are coming back this spring, and not a moment too soon. The many-membered Toronto band announced today that their sixth studio album, Remember the Humans, will arrive May 8 on their own Arts and Crafts label. It’s their first full-length album in nearly a decade, and if the first single “Not Around Anymore” is any indication, it’s going to deliver plenty of the woozy affirmation and shambolic joy that Broken Social Scene do better than anyone.

Credits for Remember the Humans reveal that this album features many familiar faces from the extended BSS universe, including singer Kevin Drew, guitarists/multi-instrumentalists Charles Spearin, Brendan Canning, Sam Goldberg, Andrew Whiteman, and Jimmy Shaw, drummer Justin Peroff, trombonist Evan Cranley, and more, plus vocals from Feist, Amy Millan, Lisa Lobsinger, Ariel Engle, and Hannah Georgas. It’s a proper Broken Social Scene reunion, in other words.

The name that will draw the most attention from longtime fans is that of producer David Newfeld, who was a crucial part of the studio alchemy that went into the band’s two best albums, 2002’s You Forgot It in People and 2005’s Broken Social Scene. This is huge news if you’re someone who treasures the over-stuffed, uncontainable, transcendent rock sound that Broken Social Scene achieved with Newfeld at the helm in the 2000s.

A press bio accompanying the announcement says that Newfeld and Drew reconnected recently after many years out of touch, and notes that both of them lost their mothers during the making of Remember the Humans. The producer is quoted as saying, “Our moms would have wanted us to do this, and get it right after 20 years of not working together.”

Broken Social Scene have not released a full-length album since 2017’s Hug of Thunder; their most recent project was a pair of EPs in 2019. When those EPs came out, Drew told Rolling Stone that he already had new music in mind: “There is a next album. There’s a mission: to mellow things out a little bit, and get back to the roots of where it all started from.” Seven years later, it looks like that’s coming true.

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The band has also announced a summer tour with the closely associated bands Metric and Stars. The All the Feelings Tour, which they promise will be “a celebration of lifelong friendship and creative communion amongst the Toronto legends,” begins in early June in Austin, Texas, before wrapping two months later back home in Ontario.

June 8 – Austin, TX @ Moody Amphitheater
June 9 – Dallas, TX @ South Side Ballroom
June 11 – Denver, CO @ Fillmore Auditorium
June 13 – Sandy, UT @ Sandy Amphitheater
June 16 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Greek Theatre
June 17 – Phoenix, AZ @ Arizona Financial Theatre
June 19 – San Diego, CA @ Cal Coast Credit Union Open Air Theatre
June 21 – San Francisco, CA @ The Masonic
June 24 – Bend, OR @ Hayden Homes Amphitheater
July 24 – Chicago, IL @ Byline Bank Aragon Ballroom
July 25 – Detroit, MI @ Fox Theatre
July 27 – Boston, MA @ MGM Music Hall at Fenway
July 28 – Philadelphia, PA @ The Met
July 30 – Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Paramount
Aug. 1 – Washington, DC @ The Anthem
Aug. 3 – Atlanta, GA @ Tabernacle
Aug. 4 – Nashville, TN @ Ryman Auditorium
Aug. 7 – Toronto, ON @ RBC Amphitheatre