Broken Social Scene’s co-founder and frontperson Kevin Drew has announced his most vulnerable, minimal solo album to date—Aging—set for release on Arts & Crafts this fall.
Two songs from the album—“Out In The Fields” and “Party Oven”—can be heard now. Check them both out below.
A physical version of the album will be released on September 22. A full digital version of the album will be released on November 3. Aging’s sonic profile sits in a similar place as beloved Broken Social Scene songs like “Lover’s Spit,” “Anthems For A Seventeen Year-Old Girl,” and “The Sweetest Kill”—beautifully dark, richly melodic, and tinted with shades of melancholy and longing.
Where other Kevin Drew songs throughout his vast catalog—both with BSS and as a solo artist—lean into the exuberant fist-pump of being alive, Aging is an album best played at the end of the night; a collection for the stragglers left when the bar is about to close; a serenade for those who are coming down; songs that are quietly sad but ultimately ruminative and comforting.
Influenced by the passing of friends and mentors, as well as the health scares 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?
Aging 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 more contemplative than anything Drew has released before.
