Event Info
Kevin Drew , Ten Kills The Pack
Flying V Productions presents: a performance by Broken Social Scene's front man
8:30pm Doors at: 7:30pm
$46.48
Event Description
Kevin Drew's Aging
“When you’re aging, and those around you are aging – people get sick, and people die,” Kevin
Drew says. “There’s no real way to convey your pain or grief without being self-indulgent within
the high-five denial – but regardless of the personal details, it’s a reality.”
Aging, the third solo album from the co-founder of Toronto’s beloved indie-rock collective
Broken Social Scene, was the inevitable title of Drew’s meditative new record – because he was
living everything that comes with it.
Compared to his shambolic solo debut Spirit If (2007), with its 23-piece band and romantic
musings, to the black-light synth-pop-tinged Darlings (2014) and its carnal obsessions, Aging’s
collection of minimalist piano ballads is darker and more contemplative than anything Drew has
released before.
Influenced by the passing of friends and mentors, as well as the health of friends and family,
Aging brings together songs written over a decade marked by the signifiers of midlife – love,
loss, and illness – all while wrestling with the hard truths of aging: How do you deal with the
blunt-force impact of loss? What does it mean to look and feel different than you did before?
Across the eight tracks on Aging – which runs a compact but potent 33 minutes – can be found
the spirit of Drew classics like “Lover’s Spit” and “Sweetest Kill,” but with a sense of sorrow
rarely heard on previous material. The writer of some of indie rock’s most life-affirming and
celebratory anthems has become world sick.
Lyrics like “We gotta find some time / Everybody’s dying for the time” from first single “Out In
The Fields” are as doggedly hopeful as Drew has ever been – yet sound more like an
impassioned plea than his typical rallying cry.
The themes that have preoccupied much of Drew’s two-decades-long career are still present –
the power of love, resisting apathy, the pursuit of connection – but the subject matter once
exclaimed with the youthful fervour of a wide-eyed idealist now carries the weight of someone
trying to make sense of the world in the throes of grief.
In 2021, Drew found himself at The Tragically Hip’s Bathouse studio near Kingston, Ont. where
he had been making records for the last decade. The initial goal was to make a children’s album,
but as Drew and longtime collaborator Nyles Spencer started recording, they found themselves
working towards an album about getting older, pulling from a collection of songs both old and
new that fit together sonically and thematically.
When your mind is occupied with the great beyond, a simple song like “Don’t Be Afraid of the
Dark,” the opener to Side B, could be a reassuring nursery rhyme as easily as it could be a
reflection on death and rebirth: “Don’t be afraid of the dark / The light always comes back on /
It’s never off too long.”
“Pain is a hard thing to let go until you’re ready,” Drew explains. “And that’s kind of where I was
at with this record. Music, for me, is a release – it’s a place where I can go and express what it is
that I want to say.”
The urgency with which Drew needed to use his music as a release can be felt on the first two
tracks, driven by a simple kick drum, layered piano, and synthesizer. When he sings, “They’re
coming for me tonight / And my friend died” on album opener “Elevators,” we can feel the
world closing in on him.
When he laments, “People are so scared / They don’t know why they’re scared / So they try
hard to act like they’re not scared” on “Out In The Fields,” we can see him searching for
answers.
Aging finds the typically declarative Drew asking more questions than ever. “We partied into
your grave. Was that okay? Was that okay? / We partied to be saved. Was that okay? Was
that okay?” Drew asks on “Party Oven,” a piano ballad about partying the pain away of losing
someone – while contemplating if cremation is a lonely exit.
These are the kind of late-night ruminations that make up the beating heart of Aging. When
Drew bemoans the “common ways we love and die” on “All Your Fails,” it evokes the feeling of a
racing mind on a sleepless night. And no song is more emblematic of the album's nocturnal tone
than the slow-burn piano dirge “Awful Lightning,” where Drew declares, “My skin is cold / I’m
not aging right / Awful lightning / Strike me down.”
Even the most hopeful songs on Aging sound less like a diagnosis of the times than a distressed
recognition – it’s the voice of someone who has imparted advice to people for years accepting
that they may not have listened.
There are times when it’s hard to know whether Drew is singing these songs to someone else or
to himself. So much of the record is expressed outwardly to an audience – but given the sadness
and loss at the core of the album, it’s possible these songs have become mantras for himself.
When he sings “I think you’re gonna get better / I think you’ll be back on your feet soon” on the
closing track, it’s as likely that he’s providing comfort to the listener as much as to himself.
Therein lies the humility and vulnerability of Aging – an artist that has spent 20 years making
empowering music and asking audiences to take care of each other is using the very same
medium to take care of himself.
“No matter what you’ve heard or seen / Don’t forget that love is free
Venue
162 Barrie St.
since 1963
In-Person Event
Fri. March 22nd 2024 + Add to Calendar
The Grad Club
