In Hear This, A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well—some inspired by a weekly theme and some not, but always songs worth hearing. This week, our favorite songs with (parenthetical) titles.
Broken Social Scene was never an integral part of my life the same way, say, Oasis or The Smiths were. But the band’s 2002 record, You Forgot It In People, is one of those LPs that I find myself frequently forgetting, listening to again, and becoming irrationally angry that I’d let the record sit idle in my mind for so long. Tracks like “Lover’s Spit” and “Anthems For A Seventeen Year-Old Girl” are heartbreakingly flawless, contributing to the record’s “endlessly re-playable perfect pop,” in Pitchfork’s words.
It must have been hard for the Canadian supergroup to push forward with its next record knowing that You Forgot It In People was universally beloved. Still, the maple leaf gang soldiered on, and three years later released the long, but still solid, Broken Social Scene. While quite a few tracks on the record are good, most pale in comparison to “7/4 (Shoreline),” a five-minute sonic meditation on the peaks and valleys of modern life’s constant barrage of media. Like everything on You Forgot It In People, it’s one of those tracks I find myself returning to often. (I’ll also frequently listen to The Hood Internet’s bastardization of the track “I’m A Flirt (Shoreline),” featuring R. Kelly, but that’s another story.) Like finding a forgotten cozy sweatshirt or a light breeze on a previously stifling 88-degree day, “7/4 (Shoreline)” is full of comforting reassurance that just because you’ve forgotten how great something is doesn’t mean it’s ceased to both exist and excel.