Let's hop a fence and do what we almost did

Kevin Drew - Safety Bricks
I can't stop listening to this song. It's been cloudly in Brisbane but the sun's just coming out. It's not overcast here very often so it felt strange to have all this grey stuff over yr head for good (or a day, at least), not just the usual couple of hours. Even though I thought the new (Broken Social Scene Presents) Kevin Drew record Spirit If... was best heard in the hazy late afternoon sun preferably seen out a dust covered window it makes so much sense in the blearly-eyed extremely early morning.



I did an interview with Kevin Drew (one of the two 'core' members of Broken Social Scene)the other day. It was weird. He was moving house in the midst of ridiculously hot weather and was a little P.O.'d. The guy before me had apparently just hung up on him (he seemed cheekily/arrogantly glad to have caused such a close to their conversation). I was sort of glad when Kevin said ‘look, I’m just going to talk to you for the next 15 minutes and tell you about this album and what it means to me’. So maybe the word ‘interview’ is incoreect. I guess we didn’t exchange many views. Not for the first two thirds, at least, but he talked away. I found it extremely inspiring not just because of my BSS fanboyness but for how right this seemed in terms of their music and how right their music seems in the world. It's surely high flown to say that the essence of BSS's sound captures 'the modern condition' and living in this strange world but I'm going to have to latch onto it this way because it's such an easy and relevant and important empathy. I'm glad someone is thinking about this stuff.

"There were about 23 people that featured. There were just so many guests that I wanted to work with. We made it on the basis that we were just recording. The biggest problem about this record was making it into an album, because we were just recording for the sake of recording and we had tones of freedom to do whatever we wanted so I was able to work in the space where I could sing twelve or sixteen songs and it didn’t matter, I didn’t have to think about anyone around me, I wasn’t thinking in the BSS format. I was just constantly recorring as much as I could. Now, that being said, this is what we came up with. Over a period of two years while we were touring and living our lives, we recording it into these songs. Then we selected what we thought would be a good record from them, this is what now is called Spirit If... Within the idea of calling it Spirit If, it was the ultimate battle between ‘what if’, the ‘what if’ society that we live in now, the ‘what if’ society that haunts basically everyone, the ‘what if’ society that is pretty much destroying modern day romance, modern day-to-day idealism. We’re always taught that there’s something else; there’s always something else out there. There’s a romanticism that has betrayed a lot of us. We called the record Spirit If... because…well…I actually had no idea why we called it spirit if, Ohad came up with the title, I had a close friend say that’s amazing, I titled it and thought long and hard with it and this is the theory that I came up with, it’s kind of the ultimate smack against the ‘what if’ society that we have all really become, and today, in this day and age, its just kind of become ridiculous how we’ve become addicted to trying out ways of not fully living in the moment so we can always have other moments to fall back onto and live with this. This is a very very personal record for me. I didn’t really intend to sit and do interviews about it, the intention was to realign me with the idea of recording. The intention was to realign me with the process of recording, which id lost with BSS because we worked with a producer that very much had his own way and because there are so many members in the band that you always had to leave space for people. But with this album I was able to fill it up with any way that I want to and I was working with two incredibly gifted people who let me do that. This was my seventh record with Charles Ferris, it just shows you that these are the people that I want to be with. The idea that the whole band is on there anyway, so why is it a solo record? Is it a solo record? Not really; it’s a version of BSS through my eyes and my voice, and it also is a version that didn’t really involve key people that are BSS so it could not be BSS record. Also, we live in a time where bands are always kidnapped by lead singers and they start to go their own way, do their own thing, write their own songs, take all the publishing, live there own lives and not pay their fucken players and blah blah blah blah blah. I couldn’t be a part of that, I’m addicted to working with people, its something I love to do, I love the process of ideas and hearing people play, especially when the players I have at my disposal to play with are not only friends but exceptional human beings to play with. So within that, within this whole speech, that’s my version of telling you what this record’s about. What do you think? Is that okay for you?"

Yes, thanks. Why don't more musicians talk about their world instead of just the music? Maybe I just ask the wrong questions.