Sacred or Sacrilege?

Covering Albums That Can't Be Improved Upon

0:00

This is a love story.The first note hits like memory itself—sudden, immersive, undeniable. Back in 2004, my roommate slid a CD across our kitchen table: You Forget It In People by Broken Social Scene. "Trust me," she said.That same week, my friend Rhiannon and I were giggling through grocery store aisles when we bumped into Ben and his friend John. Friends of friends—I'd heard Ben's name around campus a million times, but now here he was, just standing there.As the four of us chatted under fluorescent lights, the world around us blurred. My heart raced. I felt dizzy, anchored only by his eyes meeting mine. In that ordinary moment between produce and dairy, the gravitational axis of my life shifted instantaneously.Life would never be the same.

7:14

We did what young lovers do. With what little time I had before graduation, we entered into a time-warp—getting to know each other slowly, opening each petal and examining it tenderly like we had all the time in the world.The soundtrack for our sessions together: You Forget It In People.As Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl repeated its hypnotic mantra—"Used to be one of the rotten ones and I liked you for that"—we repeated ours, staying up until dawn, sharing stories that unfolded like the album's seamless transitions.If you're unfamiliar, there are a few things that make this album noteworthy. It's less of a list of tracks, and more like one long series of sonic thoughts that bleed into one another. When you put the album on, it starts at 0:00 and ends at 56:11. There is no skipping or preferring tracks.That would be like interrupting a lover to ask them to skip the story about that time their Stepmom screamed at them for jumping in the pool. You just listen to all the stories, because they all matter in understanding the whole picture of this person.There are no breaks between tracks, there are sounds running the whole length of that 56:11 minutes, queuing up the next song. That makes playing it on shuffle off limits too.

15:32

At college at CSUMB on former Fort Ord, abandoned military buildings punctuated our campus landscape. We'd slip through chain-link fences at night, flashlights illuminating forgotten barracks and mysterious concrete structures—each room telling fragments of stories we could only imagine.The album felt like those nocturnal explorations—each song a different abandoned room connected by hidden passages rather than doors. Some sprawling and filled with unexpected light streaming through broken windows, others intimate concrete chambers where whispers echoed forever.For 56 minutes and 11 seconds, Ben and I inhabited this sonic building, learning its secrets together, the way I'd learned the secrets of those military ruins. Both experiences required surrender—a willingness to follow where the spaces led without knowing what might appear around the next corner.

Exhilarating. Scary. Together.

It’s impossible to have a favorite and play it on repeat because that took us out of the ritual.

The ritual of our time, our sessions together.

Enter my room. Our attention undivided and wholly present. Turn on the stereo. Blue light bounces on. Hit play. And go.

There's a moment in KC Accidental where the chaotic instrumentation suddenly locks into perfect harmony. Lovemaking can be like that—even when you desperately desire to join together and open up, there is resistance.

It might hurt to be known so fully, plainly, so out in the open.

The steadiness of your lover—accepting that it might take time, understanding you have reason for your shields, perhaps even loving you for those very defenses—that's what finally coaxes the inner petals down and out.

The chaos gives way, and the flow of inner harmony takes over.

Looking back now, I understand what we were experiencing—our separate rhythms had synced into something greater than ourselves.

23:46

The ritual and long listen was weaving something much deeper than either of us realized.Ted Gioia wrote in his book Music To Raise The Dead about a study that explores how rhythm might actually be the bed of consciousness itself.Hunt and Schooler's research on the 'Synchronization Theory of Consciousness' suggests that our very sense of self emerges from rhythmic patterns.They propose that all things in our universe vibrate at specific frequencies, and when different vibrating systems come near each other, they often sync up—sometimes in ways that seem mysterious.This synchronization doesn't just happen in our brains; it can occur between people experiencing the same rhythms together, potentially creating deeper connections through aligned neural patterns."In other words, rhythm may not be just the pace of reality, but reality itself," Ted writes.What if we were listening and synching up the DNA of our bodies, over and over, 56:11 at a time, programming our reality? Weaving our consciousness into one?This sort of mind-bending psychedelic trip-out is simply not possible in a world where music is a commodity, where song lengths are shrinking in every genre, where albums are no longer listened to start to finish.

32:17

To say this album profoundly influenced my life barely scratches the surface.It provided the soundtrack to my greatest love—the first and only time I felt seen and understood completely and wholly by another person, ever.And it became nearly impossible to experience after we broke up.After we ended, I'm Still Your Fag became unlistenable. “But my wrists couldn't stand the life that we missed.”Twenty-four years old. Daggers of agony.

38:05

ANTHEMS: A Celebration Of Broken Social Scene's You Forgot It In People is debuting June 6th—a few tracks have already dropped including one by Toro y Moi, a collab by Maggie Rogers and Sylvan Esso, and another by Miya Folick + The Hand Habits."'Anthems' is one of those songs that fundamentally changed my life," Maggie Rogers reflected. "There's something about the lyrical repetition that functions as a sort of mantra within the song and it made me understand at a very early point in my creative life that music could be a form of meditation."

Park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor, dream about me

Park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor, dream about me

Park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor, dream about me

Park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor, dream about me

Park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor, dream about me

I listened to all three of the new tracks and had mixed feelings. At first I was a little disoriented. Then I had questions.Like, who is this even for? Fans like me, and like Maggie Rogers, we know this album by heart. Note for note, sound by sound. We know the little tones that tee up the next song, it is so singular and specific, how can it possibly be covered, let alone by a bunch of different people?It's going to sound disjointed and dislocating to anyone who loves the original.Is it for people who have never heard the original, and need an introduction? The album is over 20 years old—it would be worthwhile to introduce a new generation…?

42:59

But then, last night, me and my sweetheart went to go see Hurray for the Riff Raff in Sonoma and I think I got my answer.See, life has its own calculus. I went on after my breakup with Ben very confused about love. I thought, "Well—I was sure that was love, and I guess I was wrong. Nevermind. Fuck it."I spent the next 15 years dating disasters, being a disaster. My internal monologue, despite any outward success I was having in my business or friendships was, "I'm unlovable. I must have come out wrong."I was a low self-esteem bulldozer. Plowing over anyone and everything good, pulling a vortex of negative attention toward myself as I made a sloppy mess.I married.I had two beautiful babies, and some of those inner monologues began to shift.Birthing at home, and feeling my own power, holding those babies in my arms and understanding for a fact that there was absolutely no way I could have come out wrong, we do not come into this world flawed. There is no original sin.We come in perfect. Whole.Things started to shift under the surface for me.Eventually I left that marriage, as consciously as I could.Then I labored and birthed in a new vision of myself, and rewrote that inner script altogether.Whatever I had learned from childhood that reinforced the idea that I was somehow unloveable—that ancient, rusted machinery of self-hatred—I finally unplugged it. Ripped out its wires. Watched it sputter and die.I didn't just reject those old beliefs; I annihilated them.I started loving myself with the same fierce, unwavering devotion I give my children. Not as an aspiration. Not as therapy-speak. As fundamental truth.I do it for myself. I love myself.Fuck if anyone else is with me.(Though they are, by the way, because—surprise—I'm kind of fucking awesome.)

47:23

Then one day, I was standing in my kitchen doing dishes, happy single mom status, and I get a text that reads—"Hi Kate, it's Ben. I hope you're doing well. Just thinking about you."And I almost died. I laughed, cried, and took my chance—we eventually got on the phone and after warming up a bit I told him the truth:I still love you.Turned out, he did too.Today, I am daily astonished and in awe to be reunited with him after 18 years apart, You Forget It In People back in the heart of our home.Hearing Lover's Spit again after eighteen years apart was like finding a time capsule we'd buried together. The lyrics "All these people drinking lover's spit..." suddenly felt like prophecy rather than poetry.When we separated, I locked those sonic rooms away, much like how the military had sealed off those buildings—places too filled with memories to safely enter. Eighteen years later, we're walking through them again, finding our old fingerprints still visible on the walls.But we're doing something else too—matching our memories, one of us filling gaps where the other's recollection fades. "Remember that time..." becomes an excavation project.I remember the cheap wine, he remembers the conversation.I recall a tear, he remembers the reason for it.And then, gently, we show each other what happened in those eighteen years apart—the landscapes we crossed alone, the people we became, the lessons that scarred and sculpted us.We are still who we were then, but more.The core melody remains, but now with harmonies, counterpoints, and depths that only time could compose.And while we still love this album, we don't ritualize it like we used to. We don't need to. The soundtrack has expanded beyond those 56:11 minutes.We've become fuller people with more life to share and explore outside this memory palace. The album is no longer the container for our love—it's just one beautiful room in a much larger home we're building together.And, funny, neither of us realized this album held much significance to anyone else. We were in our own little bubble.We existed in our private universe—mistakenly believing, as young lovers do, that it occupied the epicenter of our personal cosmos.It feels perfectly timed now to lift our gaze in middle age, seeing each other more clearly while discovering multitudes of others who share our devotion to this transformative music.We thought ourselves alone all this time. Of course, we never were and never are.

52:06

What struck me last night, as Ben and I held hands and listened to Hurray for the Riff Raff was this:For years, I was on the outside of music.I didn't start singing until I was 34 because I thought I couldn't.I didn't start playing guitar until I was 40.I didn't finish my first song until I was 41.I was on the outside looking in, admiring, envious, my whole life.I listened and wondered how it must feel to be in the flow of all the beauty and expression, feeling profound grief that I would die never knowing.Until, I put myself on the inside.And the inside is more beautiful than I ever could have imagined.And it's not about making things because it makes sense—like, "hey, let's make this tribute album because it makes sense."You do it because you love it. Because you are devoted to it. Because you owe a piece of your soul to it.This is where the industry of music has us all ass-backwards.It's not about making money.It's about making beauty and changing the fabric of reality.The artists who are paying tribute to this album love it in their own way, and are getting the honor of being inside the song, exploring it from a holy vantage point.Not to improve upon it. To revere it.

55:27

Listening to the tribute album, in my mind, is the same reason why people pilgrimage to Jokhang Temple in Lhasa to watch the monks in prayer. It is holy. Sacred.You get something just by being in vicinity of that energy, but it doesn’t replace prayer.The musicians are practiced channels, allowing sounds to pass through their bodies, hearts, minds—their own unique antennae—and the distortion to the original sound will be part of what makes it interesting. Fascinating.Nothing will replace the original for me and Ben. That's okay. Both things can exist.This is why tribute albums matter. They're not just commemorations but invitations—doors back into buildings we once inhabited, rhythms that once synchronized our hearts with others.The magic of Broken Social Scene isn't just in the notes they played, but in how those notes became the architecture of countless love stories like mine. Every person who listens creates their own universe within those 56:11 minutes.When I press play now, with Ben beside me again, I understand that we never really left that sonic universe. We just took a different path through it—a path that somehow, miraculously, led us back to each other.Maybe that's what the band understood all along—that music doesn't just preserve moments; it creates gravity that can pull souls back into alignment, even across decades.

56:11

In addition to the album, It's All Gonna Break Stephen Chung's documentary traces Broken Social Scene's evolution from Toronto underground act to indie rock icons. The film weaves together backstage moments, personal footage, and conversations with key members including Kevin Drew, Feist, and Emily Haines. Viewers also glimpse the band's early performances and formative period.You can preview the new tracks on Bandcamp, pre-order the album there or on the band's website. They are doing a small amount of touring and some documentary screenings too.