Since it seems like every member of everyone’s favourite sprawling local indie-rock collective Broken Social Scene is busy with their own various musical pursuits, it makes sense that their charming slacker frontman, Kevin Drew, would finally put his name on an album of his own. But look a little closer at his recently released record, and you’ll notice that even though Spirit If… is a solo effort, it’s still being billed as “Broken Social Scene Presents” (the band is also hoping to put out solo releases by bassist Brendan Canning and drummer Justin Peroff down the road). Not that Drew would have it any other way—in fact, most of the extended BSS family lends a hand on Spirit If…, and much of the old crew will come together again to act as the backing band for his live shows in support of the record, including a sold-out hometown gig at Lee’s Palace this week. The Varsity chatted with the affable indie icon last week over pints on a local patio as he chain-smoked, text-messaged, and chided idling drivers. —
Tabassum Siddiqui: Once you decided Spirit If… (which was initially born out of BSS recording sessions with pals/producers Charles Spearin and Ohad Benchetrit of Do Make Say Think) was going to be a solo album, did that change your approach to things?
Kevin Drew: It changed the idea of how things were going to sound for me. It made me do things where I didn’t care so much. Anything that was embarrassing intrigued me even more. When it’s yours, you have a free speech where no powers that be are going to tell you what to do; you don’t have any allegiance to making sure that other people are getting heard and stuff like that. So having a different outlook on things, different opinions, was wonderful.
The ‘Broken Social Scene Presents’ series kind of came up as a way of keeping our name within us, and we also start up a new way of filtering out more music that doesn’t have to go under what BSS has now become— this big band with all the people and the guests and the strings and the urgency and all that shit.
TS: You’ve mentioned that you prefer the writing and recording process over touring.
KD: My dream for me is to find peace with being on the road all the time— to find peace with being away from my love, find peace with not having a house half the time and always running around… I fought it for the past year and half, and I lost. So now I have to accept my defeat and realize that if I want to continue to do stuff like this, I have to find some peace with it.
TS: And now that you’re about to head out on the road again in support of this album, how are you going to deal?
KD: The drinking has to stop, because that just gets introduced to you in a way where you’re like, ‘Wow, I just made a couple hundred bucks tonight and now I’m going to drink!’ I have a lot of friends who drink a lot because it’s just constantly there for you all the time, every show. So that’s the main element that I have to tackle, because I can’t sing every night and get drunk every night—it’s just not good for the body, mind, and soul.
Broken Social Scene plays Kevin Drew’s Spirit If… at Lee’s Palace Friday, Sept. 27. Sold out.
