Kevin Drew with Zoon
Schedule
Thu Mar 28 2024 at 07:00 pm
Location
Bridgeworks | Hamilton, ON
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THU MAR 28, 2024 • DOORS 7PMGA SEATED • LIC/AA • $40 (+SC/HST) ADV.
“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 K*ll,” 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, Ontario 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. 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”
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Zoon created Bleached Wavves with extremely limited, often broken gear. They worked through frustrating, lengthy delays and yet managed to reverse engineer a masterpiece of a debut. With sophomore album, Bekka Ma’iingan (Bay-ka Mo-Een-Gan) a broad spectrum of possibilities, lush orchestration, resources, collaborators and friends all supported the process. Bleached Wavves provoked us to face many difficult questions and reckon with a deeply uncomfortable and painful history. Bekka Ma’iingan continues to explore their Indigenous and life experience, and while still clutching to the unresolved, it moves us more softly and sweepingly towards acceptance. Within moments into the lead track “All Around You”, otherworldly strings are ushered in, and one is assured, as always with Zoon (the intricate musical work of Daniel Monkman), to expect the unexpected. Bekka Ma’iingan: translates directly from Ojibway to ‘slow down’ and ‘wolf’. The two words aren’t meant to be directly linked but considering the past few years, Zoon has enjoyed slowing down within the space of creating this new album. Ma’iingan is also a reference to the wolf clan Daniel is a part of, a clan handed down from their father, a clan-connection Daniel only became aware of at their father’s funeral. Gloriously intact is the shoegaze core Monkman has become known for. It rapturously arrives in full force with tracks “Care” and “Dodem.” Zoon intentionally pushes through the previously unexcavated in his work. “Shoegaze to me, always lacked colour,” remarks Monkman. “There didn’t seem to be a lot of diversity, or intricacy to it, yet it still felt really accessible, that’s why I loved My Bloody Valentine so much.” Zoon is not content to paint their work with a muted palate or stay within the traditional confines of shoegaze, but then again, they’ve already shown us as much. Monkman proved this not only with their Polaris Music Prize shortlisted, and internationally regaled debut, Bleached Wavves, but followed with their two EPs from last year, and the sonic swings they were taking were apparent. Big Pharma featured “Oil Pastel/Dopesick” - a single with Cadence Weapon that effortlessly fused shoegaze and hip hop and “Astum” (feat. Leanne Betasamosake Simpson) which garnered 2022 ‘Best of The Year’ accolades from both CBC + Exclaim!. On the second EP, A Sterling Murmuration, Daniel unearthed decades old material, that sounded as fresh and as original as anything else Zoon has released over the past few years. Add that to a back-to-back Polaris shortlist album nomination for their collaborative work with Ombiigizi, alongside composing for film and television and we are made blissfully aware that Zoon’s musical instincts know no limits or bounds. With Bekka Ma’iingan, Monkman is continuing to rebuff any limits or expectations yet again, and fully embracing the adventure and expanse of what’s next. Cue collaborating with Polaris Music Prize inaugural winner Owen Pallett to compose sweeping string arrangements, then performed by the FAMES Orchestra. Grammy nominated Michael Peter Olsen who is a regular in Zoon’s live band, played on the new record as did Zoon’s drummer Andrew McLeod/Sunnsetter who additionally sings on Bekka Ma’iingan’s premiere single, “A Language Disappears”. Grammy Award winning Mark Lawson mixed the album, and in a burst of creative collaboration, after meeting in Montreal, Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo played on album track “Niizh Manidoowig (2 Spirit)”.
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Where is it happening?
Bridgeworks, 70 Sheaffe St, Hamilton, ON L8R 2E9, Canada,Hamilton, OntarioEvent Location & Nearby Stays: