Broken Social Scene’s latest offers up one rousing song after another

BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE “HUG OF THUNDER” (ARTS AND CRAFTS)

It’s hard to believe Broken Social Scene didn’t already come up with that title earlier in their career. It defines both their sound and their live experience: a warm embrace, almost suffocating at times, all the biggest emotions laid bare and expressed through gesture. Vulnerability presented with a small army of friends. A big, big love with a big, big sound, forever and ever, amen.

Broken Social Scene took a hiatus after touring 2010’s “Forgiveness Rock Record,” which is a good thing: this was never a band built for the recording/touring cycle, and time apart has always benefited the project. This time out, singers Leslie Feist and Emily Haines are noticeably back in the fold, joined by Ariel Engle (AroarA, Hydra). The horns also play a larger role, giving everything an extra heft. With so many solo outlets for the individual members, “Hug of Thunder” benefits from a united sense of purpose: everyone involved knows what this particular band does well, and hence we have one rousing song after another that also happen to be filled with sonic shades that tickle the tiny corners of your headphones, the kinds of songs U2 has been trying to write for the past 25 years and failing, songs marry pop melodies, stadium ambition and experimentalism. Even the lower-key, more subtle material seems designed to echo out across large festival fields.

As with any band this size, and with this level of talent and competing egos, the real trick is avoiding bloat and excess. With this group of old friends, it sounds like that gets even easier with age.

Stream: “Halfway Home,” “Skyline,” “Please Take Me With You”

PRINCE AND THE REVOLUTION “PURPLE RAIN: DELUXE EDITION” (WARNER)

The Vault is open. Yes, Vault with a capital V, long a source of wonderment among Prince fans for what be held in an actual vault inside his Paisley Park complex, which apparently holds enough outtakes that it will take decades for archivists to wade through them. Glimpses into the Vault have been rare: some tracks surfaced on his online-only fan club release “Crystal Ball” in 1998; he also released a subpar contractual fulfillment album called “The Vault” in 1999.

But this is the gold mine: unreleased material and outtakes from the “Purple Rain” sessions, right in the middle of an astounding five years of creative output (1982-87) that rivals only The Beatles. The reason none of this surfaced at the time was that Prince had already moved on, recording almost any day he wasn’t on the road (or shooting a movie). So here we have unreleased pop throwaways like “Velvet Kitty Kat” (not to be confused with, um, “Scarlet Pussy”), showcases for Revolution members Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman (“Our Destiny”), and falsetto ballads that rival “The Beautiful Ones” (“Electric Intercourse”). Then there are repurposed takes on songs we already know, but drastically different and worth the attention of even the most casual fan: there’s a 12-minute version of “Computer Blue” with some of the best guitar sounds Prince (and/or Wendy) ever put to tape, or the piano and synth version of “Father’s Song,” which was repurposed for the outro of “Computer Blue.” Then there’s “We Can F—k,” a track he worked on for seven years before a very different version emerged on 1990’s “Graffiti Bridge,” featuring George Clinton. Or extended funk workouts like “The Dance Electric” or “Possessed,” which, as usually the case with Prince, are light years ahead of tracks that most ’80s R&B and pop acts would release as lead singles.

You’d be forgiven this was a total posthumous cash grab from his label and estate. It’s not. The artist who once shaved the word “slave” on his face signed a new deal with Warner in 2014 in which he regained ownership of all his recordings for the label; Prince oversaw this project before his death last April. Which is obvious once you hear the attention to detail in bringing these tracks to life; hissy cassette dubs had circulated for years among fans, but everything here is pristine and perfect. And even if you think you never need to hear the “Purple Rain” album proper again, this is one of the rare remastering jobs that warrants attention — unlike, say, [cough] “Sgt. Pepper.”

A “deluxe expanded” edition includes the well-known B-sides (“Erotic City,” “17 Day” and more) and extended mixes (like the version of “Let’s Go Crazy” that appears in the film) as well as the considerably more superfluous “single edits” of the album’s most popular songs. It also tacks on a long-bootlegged full-length live show from 1985 in Syracuse, N.Y.

Not enough? Rest assured there’s still enough in the Vault to warrant some kind of five-disc 40th-anniversary Super Mondo Extra Deluxe version in 2024. And it will probably be just as great.

Stream: “Computer Blue (Hallway Speech version),” “Father’s Song,” “Our Destiny/Roadhouse Garden”