Jason Collett Creates Own (Broken) Social Scene at Feist's Cabin

For a long while, Jason Collett, elder statesman of that sprawling Toronto-based indie-rock collective of some esteem, Broken Social Scene, has been putting out solo albums that reflected his own interests and obsessions. What's curious about his latest, 'Rat a Tat Tat,' is that whereas his previous records seemed to feature an artist breaking free from the collaborative aspects of music making, his new CD flourishes specifically because of it.

"I'm really feeling it's my strongest work, so I'm quite proud of it," the affable Collett tells Spinner from his Toronto home. "I was very excited going into making this because of the potential for collaboration with the Zeus boys [Mike O'Brien and Carlin Nicholson] and I'm just as excited and even more pumped coming out of it for all the collaboration and good times, all the spontaneous bits of magic that happened throughout."

Some of which took place during a sleepover recording session in Feist's cabin.

"It couldn't have rolled out better, in my mind," he continues. "We had the opportunity to record in a few places, partly because I was a little impatient waiting for the availability of their studio. They've become a busy little production team, Carlin and Mike."

Listening to Collett talk in detail about the process of recording 'Rat a Tat Tat' reveals that the creation of the album is almost as interesting as the album itself. "It's a natural inclination to want to find your comfort zone, but it's often more interesting to find your discomfort zone, to see how things change," he says.

Recorded at O'Brien and Nicholson's studio, at Leslie Feist's cabin, and even in his own neighbourhood at Don Kerr's place, 'Rat a Tat Tat' is the result of Collett and co. blending a whole lot of attention-to-detail creation with some full-on experimentation alongside some pinches of wanderlust and hopefulness in there for good measure.



"It changes the dynamic," says Collett about moving around a lot while creating his record. "We did this two-day session up at Feist's place where we kind of sprawled throughout this cathedral-ceilinged living room that had a balcony on it where the sound board was. It gave us all kinds of interesting mic-placement opportunities.

"We were essentially sprawled out and playing as a band and also sharing meals and doing that sort of focused pajama-party eight-hour session. Part of the intention was to chase after that mythic, four-in-the-morning [revelation], the sort of vibe where everybody's really exhausted and not putting too much into it but something just sort of happens. And we captured some of that."

Thing is, as much as they captured, they missed some, as well -- while a lot of things came together at Feist's, a lot didn't.

"We didn't necessarily nail the definitive versions of some of the songs that we did there, which we ended up nailing over at Don Kerr's place," Collett says, while discussing how variables including "the cereal you ate for breakfast" and "who chooses to pick up what instrument" undeniably change the way a song comes into being.

That said, his parting shot at the subject suggests that he's okay with that.

"You can't force a song into a mold or else you lose its spirit."