Album Review: Broken Social Scene - Hug Of Thunder

How do you grapple with the logistical difficulties of rebooting a band that used to have 17 members?

By their own admission, Hug Of Thunder wouldn't have sounded bona fide unless everyone had been involved as it had been seven years since Forgiveness Rock Record, a bombastic hodgepodge of grand themes and experiments that didn't always hit the mark.

Yet, despite that three of the band members' fathers died during the recording and the global climate of doom, Hug Of Thunder remains optimistic and in the spirit of the band we know. Halfway Home sets the pace early on as a high energy, fuzz-bass driven hymn in the vein of 7/4 (Shoreline). The contradiction of Broken Social Scene though is that despite their numbers, the band are often at their most effective channelling intimate grooves, very much evidenced by the title track, a glorious ode that transforms from hushed longing to a serenely soaring chorus. Mouth Guards Of The Apocalypse is another winner that morphs from blissful ambience into an off kilter fuzz-bomb outburst. Yet, for its successes, there's not enough here to elevate Hug Of Thunder to the levels of You Forgot It In People or their eponymous triumph.