After founding one of indie rock’s most influential collectives, Brendan Canning steps into a spotlight of his own.

As might be expected of the co-founder of a wildly beloved band with close to 20 members but no official line-up, Brendan Canning isn't the type to get hung up with formalities.
When we caught up with Canning, he and his Broken Social Scene band mates were getting ready to take the stage at the Mercury Lounge in New York City to celebrate the release of his solo debut, Something for All of Us… Unfettered by anxiety about the upcoming event, Canning paused in the midst of affectionately impersonating his band mates’ singing voices and keyboard parts (“whmmm, whmmm, whemm”) to bat a beachball back and forth with school children on a nearby playground.
Later that night, as the band brings its set to a close, Canning admits from the stage that after performing for nearly two hours, the group has no idea what to play next. He is, he says, open to suggestions.
“This is why we’ll never play Madison Square Garden,” says the Scene's other co-founder, Kevin Drew, commenting on what he jokingly refers to as the group’s lack of “professionalism.”
Because their usual female singers were either on tour or, as Drew puts it,  “hanging out on Sesame Street” (a reference to the group’s sometimes-singer Leslie Feist, who had taped a guest appearance on the children's show that week), the two original Scenesters invite Audrey, a young woman they'd met earlier that afternoon, on stage to sing their single, “7/4 (Shoreline).”
At the release party following the show, Canning recalls that the shoebox-sized Lounge was the first New York club he and the Scene ever played. (A few days later, they will perform for thousands as the headliners of Coney Island's ultra-hip Siren Festival.)
Though obviously proud of the super-charged, psychedelic pop of Something, Canning is as loose as his music and stage shows when it comes to explaining why he thought it was time to release an album under his own name.
“Well, the clock struck 2007,” he says. “My next-door neighbor has a studio he works out of and had been asking me for a long time to come out to his studio and make some music. That was basically it.”

Listen to two tracks from Canning’s latest album, Something for All of Us…

Breaking the Scene
Canning was DJing electronic dance music at a Toronto bar when he first met Drew, who—“if you can believe it”—was working as a security guard. “He was looking for someone who brought beer into the bar that the bar wasn’t selling, so I was like ‘oh yeah, I’ll help you find that person,’” Canning recalls. “But I was actually the person. We never caught him.”
According to Canning, the two lived in the same neighborhood and went to the same record stores, and soon bonded over a shared love of indie guitar heroes “like Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr., as well as lots of the [British experimental electronic label] Ninja Tune stuff and lots of house music and hip-hop and whatever. Either you’re going to get along with someone or not. And we got along.”
The first album that Canning and Drew made, 2001’s Feel Good Lost, was a languid instrumental album (many of its songs were used to score the 2006 film, Half Nelson). But they found it difficult to translate their sound into an exciting live show, leading them to recruit their musician friends to help make the band’s stage presence more rambunctious.
The effect of all that mingling spread from the stage to the studio. Their 2002 album, You Forgot it in People, was a landmark record that won the group a Juno (the Canadian equivalent of the Grammy) for “Alternative Album of the Year” and helped make them one of the biggest indie rock groups in the world.
It has been said that the Grateful Dead never played the same set twice; sometimes it seems like the Broken Social Scene have never had the same line-up more than once. Depending on who is available, the group has toured with as few as seven members and as many as 20, with the group’s spacey, echoing songs swelling to grandiose proportions or becoming much more intimate, depending on the night.
Many of Scene’s regular players also play in such groups as Stars, Metric and Apostle of Hustle, and sometimes-vocalist Feist has become so popular that Broken Social Scene opened for her when they toured together last year.
Because of everyone’s busy schedules, the group took a semi-hiatus, “just to have a little sanity,” at the end of 2006. It also allowed its affiliates to concentrate on other projects, including Spirit If…, Drew’s 2007 solo album.
Canning says that though there’s a certain personal fulfillment in having “the final say on a piece of work,” he’s confident that there will be a new Broken Social Scene record next summer. Certainly, the names of both his recent group and solo albums reveal a belief in the role that music plays in bonding together a community.
Or a Scene, as it were.

Broken Social Scene 101
Broken Social Scene is as much a loose group of moonlighting musicians as it is a proper band. Here’s the rundown on four of the members’ most notable efforts outside the collective.

Watch two music videos for four Scenesters’ side projects, along with Canning’s take on each band.

Remembered in People
“Music is something that’s meant to be shared. I’m not going to toil away in my lab by myself just perfecting everything exactly the way I want it,” he says. “I don’t want to just hear my ideas, because after a while, I’m going to get bored of my ideas. I want to hear other people’s takes—where a song could go anywhere they can push it and stretch it.”
Though Canning considers Something a solo album, it is officially titled “Broken Social Scene Presents Brendan Canning.” And it features contributions from Drew and other Scene regulars including drummer Justin Peroff, singers Amy Millan and Jason Collett, and 15 other regular contributors.
The fact that Canning didn’t simply file the album under his own better-known moniker can be considered a side effect of his laid back approach.
“I started Broken Social Scene, so I didn’t see any need to make a solo album necessarily,” he says. “But other people were off doing other things. I still had lots of Broken Social Scene on the record.
“I just make music, whoever happens to be there,” he adds. “Yeah, those specifics don’t really enter into the picture.”
Before Something, Canning had only sung lead vocals on three Broken Social Scene songs, including the twirling fan favorite “Stars and Sons.” Though the 38-year-old had fronted earlier groups such as hHead, By Divine Right, and Valley of the Giants, he assumed the role of wise professor when he and Drew formed Broken Social Scene.
He preferred to focus on keeping the group’s gigantic songs cohesive, while Drew and other singers injected them with poetic longing.
“I just had some extra work to do. I’ve always been instrumental with Broken Social Scene, whether it has been playing bass or playing guitar or playing keys or playing piano or arrangements or writing—what have you. So this was a lot more me,” Canning explains.
He adds that singing was “a little more responsibility, but I’m supposed to move forward as a creator and an artist. It’s not the worst thing in the world, that’s for sure. I don’t have any problem stepping up to the microphone.”