Kevin Drew, the 47-year-old lead member of Broken Social Scene, battles time, age, and loss all over the aptly-titled Aging. It is easy to get lost in the hypnotic production – the beautifully arranged, swirling drums and pianos, the acoustic guitars on tracks like “Party Oven” and the piano arpeggios of “Awful Lightning” are nicely added touches. At a mere 32 minutes long, the songs on Kevin Drew’s Aging convey a strong sense of feeling, but a lack of meaning.
The variety in song structures across Aging showcase Drew’s experience and maturity as a songwriter. He forgoes conventional “verse-chorus-verse” structures in favor of strung out verses with recurring melodies. Lyrically, many of these tracks are stripped-back, allowing the instrumental to convey much of the emotion. The opener, “Elevators,” mentions the loss of a close friend, “Elevator please change your name / Because he’s coming for me tonight / And my friends die.” This is about as personal as the lyrical content gets on Aging. Instead, Kevin Drew’s writing across Aging tends to gravitate towards general feelings of grief, loss, and the passing of time, such as on “All Your Fails,” “In all the ways we’ve died for love / The common ways we’ve died for love.” Much of the lyrical content across this album is as such – ambiguous and devoid of specific personal meaning and experience. Although, the relaxed drum loop and chord progression on “Elevators” and stressed vocals on “All Your Fails” convey the feeling of grief and loss that Kevin Drew is carrying.
“Awful Lighting” has the most impressive arrangement on the whole album – pianos, acoustic guitars, and a hypnotic vocal lick at every snare hit. The lyrical content is very stripped back, but the instrumental aspects carry much of the heavy lifting on this track. “Party Oven,” on the other hand, has a dark and moody atmosphere. Drew sings in a low register, which he lifts out of at end of the runtime to create an extremely satisfying listen. However the auto tuned vocals on “Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark” are misplaced. A fuller and grander instrumental might have masked the awkwardness of the vocals well, though the autotuning sticks out like a sore thumb over the lackadaisical piano backing. The sound of “Out In The Fields” is a bit derivative, though the themes of living in the moment and making use of time in the face of mortality are powerful and fit in well considering the context of the album.
The tone, the melodies, and the vocals across Aging are potent and sensitive. The bassy piano arrangements are well composed to fit the feeling of this album – one of dread, grief, and the crisis of aging – but, Kevin Drew’s lyrics have room to grow in a more personal and intimate direction to make Aging a holistically emotional and impactful listen.
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