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Broken Social Scene multi-instrumentalist Charles Spearin says the Canadian band’s new album, Remember the Humans, was sculpted as “a return to our original sound.”
Indeed, the mix of anthemic hooks and linstrumental layering on recent singles like The Call hark back to the spirit of 2002’s You Forgot It in People and its self-titled follow-up from 2005; records that have made them an enduring and beloved indie force for more than 25 years.
The titles Remember the Humans and You Forgot It in People perhaps also allude to how the project – which has involved dozens of artists since co-founders Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning began it in the late ‘90s – thrives on an elastic connectivity between its many contributors.
Spearin has been integral while performing guitar, bass, and production, among countless roles. The key ingredient to Humans, however, was reconnecting with producer-engineer David Newfeld, who tracked those early releases. The recent sessions in his studio “dungeon” in Trenton, Ontario, reflect BSS’ creative drive.
“Dave was the main instrument,” Spearin explains, though he concedes that there’s also gear carry-over between Humans and those old albums. “For You Forgot It in People, we put a lot of things through my little Traynor Guitar Mate from 1974: vocals, guitars, basses. I think we put drums through it at a certain point.
“That amp was a big part of the sound of that record, and we use that on this record as well. And I used my same Silvertone guitar. But the main thing was going through Dave’s gear again.”
Newfeld had Spearin track multiple waterfall-spindling guitar lines for opener Not Around Anymore. The producer also flexed a bunch of self-built compressors, preamps, and EQs. “He’s passionate about all that stuff,” says Spearin. “Working with him, you get a sound that you don’t get with anybody else.”
Spearin definitely knows about playing with others. Spanning back to the ‘90s, his extensive musical resumé includes exploring post-rock hypnotism with Do Make Say Think, touring as part of BSS alum Feist, recording the award-winning Secret Path album with late Tragically Hip singer Gord Downie and composing experimental symphonies with a clutch of iPhones.
He’s worked with myriad artists, this including the five active guitarists manning the frontlines of any given BSS performance.
“When the band first broke, we played a show at [Toronto’s] Sneaky Dee’s. That was when we realized that everybody wanted to play guitar!” Spearin recalls. “We recognized the ridiculousness of it early on and embraced it.”
How did you get your start on guitar?
I think it begins with a 13-year-old kid going to the Long & McQuade garage sale with his whole wad of paper-route money and buying an El Degas starburst Strat copy, then learning how to play (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction and feeling the excitement in my chest.
Is that El Degas still in your collection?
No. I traded up to an Epiphone Les Paul copy, and then to a hollowbody Ibanez. I got into metal in high school and played in a band called the Dead Lemmings, but then I discovered music in a different way in my 20s.
I started listening to Yo La Tengo and Spiritualized – music that was a lot less about virtuoso playing where you're trying to figure out how to play Kirk Hammett or Joe Satriani solos note-for-note. Ira Kaplan from Yo La Tengo is still one of my favorite players, because it's mostly noise and passion.
From there I found an old Silvertone with a little lipstick pickup in it for $200. It had a big crack in the neck, but it had so much character. That’s what I've been playing since 2001.
Recently I was given a 1448 Silvertone, which Beck and Angel Olson play – the one that comes with the amplifier built into the case. That was given to me by Nicholas Ley, the drummer for The Flaming Lips.
Broken Social Scene went to play in Oklahoma and Nick came to the show. He watched me play in soundcheck and was really intrigued that I played a Silvertone. He went home and came back with the 1448 and the amp-case, and he was like, “I want to give this to somebody who’ll appreciate it. I have two of them.”
The sound is like nothing else. I have a bunch of other more modern guitars, but there's something about the shimmer of these lipstick pickups and the woodiness of the body that I just love.
Broken Social Scene is a famously huge collective of folks. What are the challenges about working with that big of a creative hive mind?
The motto in Broken Social Scene is “leave space for who knows what.” Any one of us could fill all the space we want – it’s more about the personality and the choices that our friends are going to make.
A nice example is Halfway Home [from 2017’s Hug of Thunder]. There’s a lot of intertwined guitar melodies going in there, and everybody kind of has their moment. But the way they’re woven together is unique. It’s everybody's personalities represented in something that ends up being bigger than themselves. That’s sort of what Broken Social Scene seems to be about: being a small part of a bigger picture.
Do you recall the smallest stage you’ve played with the biggest version of the band?
We’ve spilled over the sides of an awful lot of stages in the early days of touring and pulling up to tiny little clubs. Grand Rapids, Michigan, comes to mind – we all piled into this little house and filled up half the living room with our amps and instruments.
If you try and figure out the bass line for Not Around Anymore, you’d have a very hard time. It’s four or five basses all doing different things!
And we played a house concert a couple years ago where there was basically no room for an audience – people were sticking their heads through the windows! But it was super-hot, sweaty and fun.
One of the biggest melodies in the Broken Social Scene songbook is your constant-crawling bass line through You Forgot It in People’s Stars and Sons. What do you remember about that?
Dave Newfeld was trying to get his studio working, and we all had to amuse ourselves while his old board was falling apart – smoke was coming out of the back of it.
I think Andrew Whiteman was playing this little Bontempi keyboard in the corner. Dave had this old Craftsman bass, a hollowbody that I loved. I was noodling around with this fairly Do Make Say Think-ish bass line, but a little more Beatles-y because of the tone of the bass.
Then I expanded it so it was this nice kind of rising bass line. It's actually in the key of C, but I rarely ever play a C, so it has this suspension to it – it never really lands until you get to the bridge. Brendan Canning threw down a vocal and we kept the very first scratch he did. That was an exciting moment!
There are performances where you’re hitting that line on bass, and others on an acoustic guitar.
There’s a lot of flying by the seat of your pants in Broken Social Scene. I’ve missed a few tours – because of family issues, or I was recording with Do Make Say Think, or touring with Feist – so everybody knows most of the parts. We can alternate. It may be that somebody else was playing the bass part that night and I just decided to double it on the acoustic guitar.
What are some of the biggest guitar triumphs on this new record?
This album seems to be more amorphous. The way Dave Newfeld mixed it, there’s a lot of parts coming in or fading out. If you try and figure out the bass line for Not Around Anymore, you’d have a very hard time, because it’s four or five different basses all doing different things!
One of the things I like about this record is that it is kind of difficult to figure out. It’s a bit of a mystery, yet I feel it really comes together in a musical, emotional way. Again, it’s the almost egoless part of Broken Social Scene, where everybody puts their ingredients into the stew and then nobody can take credit for it.
You’ve collaborated with a lot of people over the years. Is there anything that stands out as a particularly surreal meeting of the minds?
I went with a violinist to this tiny chapel. Our musical connection was instantaneous – joy cracking out of our chests!
I was invited by Feist to a writer's retreat in 2019, at this castle in northern Italy with a whole gaggle of really brilliant musicians. I don't want to list them, because it was kind of a private thing, but it was a week of writing and hanging out with these incredible musicians from around the world.
I brought my nyckelharpa, which is kind of a brutalist violin with buttons. You’re not playing the fretboard; there’s little buttons that press against the strings. Having played guitar for all these years made playing the nyckelharpa kind of easy, because it's more about memorizing chord shapes. You just need to learn the bowing.
I went with a violinist to this tiny chapel, not much bigger than a living room. The acoustics in this space were so amazing. Our musical connection was instantaneous – joy cracking out of our chests as we were playing!
But this space was also in a region of Italy that was totally destroyed by the bubonic plague in the 1300s. There was graffiti all over the walls that were basically pleas for help saying, “God, save us from the plague.”
But then there’s also this big red X painted on the wall, which meant that the plague had finally moved on – yet only 10 percent of the population survived. So, this place had such a haunting and hopeful energy in it. Every day we went back and improvised in this little church, and it was otherworldly. It felt so joyful, and so honest.
- Remember The Humans is on sale now.
