Broken Social Scene have been keeping a secret from the world. Since You Forgot It In People established the band as indie pop champions in 2002 they have appeared a decentralized band, a band with no real leader, no chief songwriter, nobody in the driving seat. Sure, that guy with the shaggy beard was always at the front singing, smiling, and spontaneously hugging audience members. However, the recent release of Broken Social Scene Presents: Kevin Drew- Spirit If has destroyed a myth; Kevin Drew has been the beating heart and driving force of the collective from the start.

This is your third time in Ireland , do you feel you get a good reception over here?

I think so… Stars were here, Feist was here, we all help each other out in getting press and whatever.

You once said “We want to affect audience’s hearts and minds with honesty”. Do you draw a line on what’s too personal in your lyrics?

I don’t. I never really have. I never really wanted to take any personae to protect myself from myself on stage. I really wanted to get the people who could relate and take it to their own lives. I never wanted to tell personal stories, it wasn’t really a goal of mine, but I also didn’t want to hide anything from anyone who was giving me the time of day. And I never really have.

So you find it pretty cathartic writing songs?

Yeah I don’t really “write”, I just speak my mind, and I did that especially with this album. I didn’t write any lyrics, except for a couple, just made it up as we went along, and then we ended up keeping them.

How did the idea of the Presents series come about?

It kinda came at the end. Bernard (Canning, co-founder of Broken Social Scene) was making his own record, and I made this record with Ohad and Charlie (Benchetrit and Spearin, also of Do Make Say Think). We were wondering what to do because I made it as a solo record, and over the space of a couple of years everybody came in eventually. Once you have certain people come in, well, you’re like “I have to get everybody in”. These are my friends, and these are the people I make music with. And then once we chose the selection of what was going to be on the record we saw that some of these were band-written songs, songs that Ohad and Charlie had written, like Big Love which I just sang on top off. I started to see that it wasn’t so much my solo record anymore, but my stream of consciousness solo record. So we thought we’d start this Presents series 1. because Bernard had made his record, and 2. we didn’t want to veer off all the work we had done already with Bren, and our friends and this family we’d built up with Social Scene. And also because we have so much fucking music that we never know what the fuck to do with! So if we had another system to put things out, everything was great then.

What I think you’ll see more is more soundtrack work, or maybe we pull together a whole bunch of B-sides from everybody’s records and (re-do those with a Broken Social Scene line-up). And also, maybe we find some old guy who no-one ever heard of and he had these 16-track recordings of him and a banjo and I don’t know… Just somehow take it to the next level. It’s right there above you! (He points to a Buena Vista Social Club poster). That’s it! That’s it, man!

Spiral Stairs and J Mascis (Pavement and Dinosaur Jr. members) are on the new record. Do you think they’ll contribute again?

Yeah! I love both those guys now. I became friends with those two guys over the last few years.

How did that come about?

Both relationships were good men coming together, boyfriend-boyfriend. Scott (Spiral Stairs) was sweet, because I heard he was playing some of the You Forgot It In People record. I got that phone call, you know, the “DUDE! THE GUY FROM FUCKIN’ PAVEMENT’S PLAYING YOUR SONGS!” one. Then he asked to open for us in Atlanta, because he was on tour with Preston School Of Industry. So we met the Preston guys, they were all sweet, sweet guys, and then I stayed in touch with him, and then we stayed in touch more and we hung out in Australia when I was over. And we pretty much stayed in touch since. J Mascis was the same- We played with him, we met him, we stayed in touch and we did some shows together.
They say don’t meet your heroes, but you know what if they’re fun and sweet…

Get them in your band!

Yeah! Exactly!

And do you think the roster’s going to keep expanding?

I think it’s going to expand, increase, implode. I don’t know. All I know is I’m in it for life, and I’m excited to see what happens.

Who would be your dream guest to get in then?

There’s a lot of people I’d have liked to play with on this record, but I didn’t know them, and I didn’t want to reach out and ask them to play on it, in terms of I wanted to make this a really personal record, and wanted to know everybody who was doing it. There was only one person I didn’t know, and that was Tom Cochrane, but at the same time I knew he was the right choice. I grew up listening to his music as a kid, he’s a Canadian rock icon. I wanted to bring him in because nobody would’ve been expecting me to, and I wanted to throw in a bit of juxtaposition.

When do you think the next record will be released? There was a big gap between Spirit If and Broken Social Scene.

It’s pretty quick, it’s Brendan’s and it’ll be out in Spring. Then I think we’ll have the soundtrack work. We have shit we haven’t listened to in two years, on a hard drive somewhere. But also, we don’t take things so seriously, we might just release digital and vinyl releases from now on.

During the gig later that night, it’s obvious that some of the legend status of his album’s guests have been rubbing off on him. Commanding the stage, the band, and the crowd, he echoes Bruce Springsteen spearheading an E Street onslaught. The band even manage to come out the right side of a tongue-in-cheek U2 cover. It’s a testament to Drew’s charm and charisma that the 1000-plus die-hard indie heads comprising the crowd all sing along with him. Broken Social Scene’s big secret is out.

Daniel Gray From the moment he put the first Steps album into his stereo he knew he'd found his calling.
Email this author | All posts by Dan

Similar Posts