Broken social scene.

FORMED IN 1999, Toronto's Broken Social Scene have, over the course of three albums, grown from a small instrumental group to a sprawling rock syndicate encompassing half a dozen bands. Now embarking on a Pan-Continental tour, they're poised for international success and ready to "make you feel good with socialized health care" and a platoon of musicians.

You've gone from the first album being a minor indie success to breaking the top 50 on Amazon and being on NPR. Does that affect the way you approach the whole thing, or are you just trying to be happy about your success?

Kevin Drew: Well, yeah. This is fun, this is good; we're now in America playing to larger audiences. It's good to be mature about the whole thing and enjoy it. It's hard to be on the road, we bitch about it a lot because it's not a great lifestyle, but the shows are fun and people are good. All we ever wanted was to play for people and get our music out to them. That's what every band wants. There are bands I see all the time and their music is available everywhere but people don't give a shit. A lot of major label bands-they just force them on you and they'll be gone next year. We worked really hard and kind of did it on an independent tip. It's nice that we had this family with all these other bands to get where we are, as we are helping them get to where they are right now.

Was changing the album title mid-stream a big deal?

Kevin: It was my fault, errr ... who was it that ousted it? It might have been you actually ...

Brendan Canning: I was the one who started the official self titled record ball rolling. Was there a reason for that?

Kevin: At the time we were dabbling in making a political record, in terms of just trying to fuse the idea of forcing music and politics together in our own sort of fashion. It was at a very tense time when the elections were going down in America. We found ourselves writing songs that were in the idea of a certain vibe and the content seemed very much toward trying to fight and make the world a better place. A year later, it just kind of fizzled and never became Windsurfing Nation. What happened is that we decided to call it Broken Social Scene, because it was a representation of all the bands being together and all the collaboration. You get one chance at being new, so this was the outcome of us being virgins for three years.

Was there a conscious evolution over the three albums, or was it more natural?

Kevin: I think that there were a lot of challenges that we put upon ourselves it terms of the music. I don't think anyone assumed the record would end up the way it did. We thought we would go in and make the "next step" album, where it's a lot cleaner, the songs are more precise, and lyrically you can understand everything. Everyone would feel comfortable, we would make more money, maybe bust into radio, and fight really hard to be heard. Then we ended up making more of an indie rock record than we ever thought we'd make in our lives. It came from this idea of having all these collaborators. Dave Newfeld, our producer, became obsessed with trying to one-up You Forgot in People. He was constantly working on things, changing things, taking one song and making it three songs.

Does all that obsessing put pressure on you guys?

Kevin: Yeah. We were together, we were a team, but I definitely don't know half the shit that happened after we left, half the battles he had with stuff.

Brendan: Not only pressure, but it really strains the relationships within the group and with him as well. You go from making an album to complete deconstruction, and you have to figure out where everyone lands. It becomes difficult when you're working with a producer like Dave, who has been our comrade for four years now, and has been a big part of the sound.

You seem to use a lot of sounds and reference styles that in the past were rejected by underground music.

Kevin: I think you can hear the history of what we love in our music. As far as Dave is concerned, we would be making a record and he would stop and make a comparison; he would A/B it and would pull out [the soundtrack to] Hair. Then we would be looking at each other and he'd be like, "Listen to these drums." Whereas we would maybe pull out Stereolab.

Brendan: Or you'd be doing a vocal track and he'd tell you to be more like Michael Jackson, which is a sort of strange thing. But then you're like, "I can get behind that."

Kevin: We had Jessica Moss [violinist from A Silver Mt Zion] in, and we were like, "Dave, just let her come in, please don't get all crazy on her," and he's like, "No problem, no problem." So she comes in and gets on the mic and he says, "Can you do a little more of a Johnny Carson swing thing?" I just put my hands over my face.

Is there lots of camaraderie between the overlapping groups?

Kevin: It's real. There is a lot of camaraderie. It's weird if you think about it: Metric was here on Friday, we're here with Feist today, our other band on our label, Most Serene, is here Wednesday, and Stars are here Friday. So we're all out at the same time and it feels a little ridiculous, because usually we're performing together. This is the first time we haven't.

I've got to ask about "Handjobs for the Holidays."

Kevin: His idea. The award-winning title.

Brendan: Well, it's just a tale about the Christmas season of 2003 going into 2004. But I don't know if it necessarily reflects what was going on at the time. Lyrically, it can be interpreted in many different ways.

A lot of your lyrics are ambiguous in nature.

Kevin: Yeah, choose your own adventure. Too many bands have opened up as if there's some great importance to what's being written. But I understand that people want to sing along, so I'm going to put our lyrics online. I've been saying that for months. Just so people don't go, "I wanna hear that song, but I don't know what to say, so let's move on to the Strokes."