Broken Social Scene reminds me of every Toronto summer. The feeling of a memory is deeply embedded into the indie rock band's DNA and summer in Toronto is a lot like that: you're excited for it, yet too soon mourning its departure and thinking about what was. Summer in Toronto is soft, pink clouds at dusk that resemble thick cotton candy. It's the chugging of streetcars on tracks and dinging bells on bicycles and footsteps on hot pavement that soundtrack our hazy, humid days. A Toronto summer is one where you'll have a tall can in the park, hidden from the cyclist police brigade. It is hours spent on a backyard patio opening your heart out to a friend. It is the neon lights of a club or a DIY space or an after-hours bar; sweaty and sticky. It is the search for magic and the preservation of optimism.

Broken Social Scene try to embody optimism, even when individual members struggle to reconcile realities before them. At The Rivoli on Queen Street West, main BSS spokesperson Kevin Drew talks about how he was suffocating. Along with other core members Brendan Canning and Charles Spearin sitting upstairs in The Rivoli's emptied out bar and pool room, Drew gives context for the last song on the band's new record Hug of Thunder called "Mouth Guards of the Apocalypse." Drew says animatedly: "I had a mouth guard this year that helped me breathe again. I was suffocating. I was suffocating in thinking I was having panic attacks in my sleep. I didn't realize that your tongue is what helps you breathe the most. I got to thinking about how our subconscious was being attacked and we don't really see the effects of all that's happening around us." Hug of Thunder, out July 7 via Arts & Crafts, can be characterized as a group of people reconciling with the external world, and trying to remain hopeful. "You're dealing with a lot of people who are older and are holding on. And that's what so many people are doing right now," says Drew.

Their fifth album comes seven years after their last release, Forgiveness Rock Record. The band, sometimes known for teasing a hiatus, says that they needed to make Hug of Thunder and at this time. With Forgiveness Rock Record, Canning says, "it was a band being a band" but this record is something more. Hug of Thunder as a record title (which they say was coined by Leslie Feist, cheekily at first but then seriously) is actually sincere and I almost feel bad for being cynical and asking what it meant. "A hug of thunder is glorious…," Drew says before Spearin chimes in, adding: "Think about being in a canoe, and it's calm and then you hear thunder and it kind of wraps around you and this… you suddenly become so small and humble by the whole world. It makes you feel like you're part of everything, you know? You suddenly aren't thinking about your whole world. You're… like a piece of the entire world." See: eternal optimism amidst an oncoming storm.