We talk with Kevin Drew of Broken Social Scene.
You don’t need a scalpel to see inside Kevin Drew.
These days, the de facto leader of Toronto’s Broken Social Scene is wearing his heart on his sleeve — and perhaps a few other organs as well. His promise? Anyone who watches the band, which is scheduled to perform at Oakland’s Fox Theater on Thursday, Oct. 26, will have a great chance to see his group’s innards up close.
“We just come and we play out guts out,” Drew says. “We’re here to rip people open. Get them screaming. It’s a f—-up time, and music is a universal language. It’s that idea of never being alone.”
The power of unity has long been a tenet of Broken Social Scene’s sound, a chaotic melee of melodies and guitars that dismiss despair and instead conjure hope. It is a philosophy alive and well on “Hug of Thunder,” the band’s first new album since 2010’s “Forgiveness Rock Record.”
It’s not hard to see why it has taken the better part of a decade to get the band back together, given that Broken Social Scene is a collective that varies in number from six to nearly 20 members, including talents like Leslie Feist, Amy Millan of Stars and founding member Brendan Canning.
Drew describes the process of making the music that became “Hug of Thunder” as a group effort that rarely, if ever, required anyone to step in and serve as an editor.
“It really depends on the song and who’s guiding the passion for that tune. There’s not one designer who sort of has final say. We try not to get in the way of each other,” he says. “Feist guided ‘Hug of Thunder.’ Emily (Haines) guided ‘Protest Song.’ Brendan was a tour de force in the studio. Any time a song was starting to go south, he would just come in and lay down a bass line. This is a family more than a rock band.”
Indeed, members of Broken Social Scene have known each other for a long time. Though their first record appeared in 2001, Drew has known Millan and Haines since high school. He was 19 years old when he met Canning, and 23 when he first came to know Feist.
Drew’s now 41, and chuckles when asked if the age he first met each of his bandmates is reflective of how they act around each other now.
“There’s a lot of truth to that,” he admits. “We know each other’s moves, but I think as
you get older, you just try to have more patience about the whole thing.”
But Drew’s patience has run thin with the state of the world at large. The subject evokes a fiery tone as he condemns the effect phones and social media have had on how people live their lives.
“Our society has now become ‘moment junkies,’ always looking for the next moment to document the show, to be seen, to be appreciated, to be liked, to have the dopamine injected into your brain,” he says. “It’s this narcissistic idea about how we all need to live these days, but it’s not the truth.”
Drew believes the moments worth savoring are the ones created inside a concert venue, when fans and artists come together for a few hours to make something far deeper than likes on a status update.
“We came up during George Bush Jr.’s era, and we’re back now because we want to be here with the people,” he says. “Touring America, is so, so key for us right now, because we’re coming to say some true words, some positive words. Something to relieve the suffocation of all that’s going on. And it is suffocating. If we’re coming into your town to do momentary CPR, then that’s what we’re doing. We’re Canadian. We’re your ... neighbors. We love you. We want to see you get through it.”