Broken Social Scene

Indie rock's next great hype monstrosity has arrived in the unassuming person of You Forgot It in People, the greatest record ever made by an over-intellectual, 10-member Canadian pop collective. People's noisy tunes are coherent and sweet enough for guy-with-a-guitar open-mic readings, but here they're gussied up with expensive guitar pedals, hallucinogenic vocal effects, and enough technology to pump out five Finding Nemo sequels.

All right, it's weird and random, and it does the pointy-headed song-title thing ("Late Nineties Bedroom Rock for the Missionaries"). But People can also rock fearlessly and sigh gorgeously, particularly on "Anthems for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl," a truly bizarre lullaby with banjos, strings, and a heavily distorted female protagonist chanting "Park the car/Drop the phone/ Sleep on the floor/Dream about me" over and over and over. Trust us, it's awe-inspiring. Even the throwaway instrumentals and sound-collage tunes are inspired. Broken Social Scene seems destined to catch both barrels of the hype shotgun, drawing both starry-eyed praise and the vitriolic backlash that comes with it. We're in starry-eyed mode now -- People is every bit as grandiose and elegant as Hail to the Thief is murky and depressing. To hate it, first you must love it. You will.