Twenty years after their conception, Toronto’s Broken Social Scene remind us that they’re not going anywhere. After the seven-year silence that resulted in 2017’s Hug of Thunder, the two-part Let’s Try the After comes as a sign of continuity. The project’s first half, released this February, was understood as a refreshing amuse-bouche, but Vol. 2 is more clumsily served. At their best, Broken Social Scene create intimate moments of restlessness, gradually building urgent percussion and layered vocals without sacrificing their versatility and love of detail. Here, the band’s signatures—propellant drums and fierce, lime-lit guitar solos—soon prove stale. Though it settles into comfortable territory, Vol. 2 ultimately feels purposeless and undercooked.
BSS co-founder Kevin Drew has explained that Let’s Try the After is about persevering to overcome life’s obstacles: “Sickness, suicide, uprise, love, death, betrayal, hurt, joy, sex, communication, battles and divisions… Let's just get to their after and start building again.” On Vol. 1, the vibrant instrumental “Remember Me Young” and the melancholic “1972” beautifully captured the thesis. But aside from their titles, there isn’t much cohesion between the two halves of Let’s Try the After. The only musical connection lies in their psych-rock instrumental openers. Vol. 1’s “The Sweet Sea” was sedate, while Vol. 2’s “Memory Lover” is energetic and propulsive; where the former made for an exciting prologue, the latter feels more like an interlude.
There are moments where their beloved innovation breaks through. Zigzagging synth lines and two separate guitar solos bring an easygoing revelry to “Can’t Find My Heart.” “Let’s Try the After” radiates ominous background noise: a low and blurry piano, hissing whispers, vibrant arcade game sounds, and a mournful horn crying in the distance. Splintering horns and clamorous drum hits bring closing track “Wrong Line” closest to the band’s past post-rock exuberance, yet in failing to confidently resolve the strangeness of Let’s Try the After, it makes for an unsatisfactory ending. “We got caught in the wrong line,” Drew sings, fading out into a void.
Across Vol. 2, BSS seem cognizant they’re lacking something—maybe a heart, a companion, or self-knowledge. “Big Couches” begins even-tempered, building to a hovering suspense peppered with jubilant horns, but there’s no burst of resolution. “Where did you go?/I can’t recognize this supposed to be,” Drew sings. His voice is awkwardly masked in Auto-Tune, furthering the sense of unrecognizability. Let’s Try the After may be inspired by forward movement, but it feels directionless, preoccupied by searching without clarifying what was lost. “Tomorrow’s kind of a bitch/The kind of bitch you can believe,” a jaded Drew exclaims on the title track, a depressing (and infuriatingly sexist) finishing sentiment for a song ostensibly about entering uncharted territory.
There is a hunger apparent on Let’s Try the After Vol. 2. Whether in the roaring guitar solos or transcendent piano riffs, Broken Social Scene seem keen to fulfill the promise of a second half. But these songs are rarely strong enough to stand on their own. Though their familiar sound is warm and at times welcoming, it pales in comparison to the developed instrumental ferocity of the band’s past catalog. There’s no enthralling combustion to rival “Ibi Dreams of Pavement (A Better Day)” or “7/4 (Shoreline),” no warm percussive bath like that of “Love and Mathematics.” Here, Broken Social Scene seem to have forgotten their gift for making the listener feel as if in the room, standing at a comfortable distance, in favor of awkward small talk with a stranger.
