KEVIN DREW SHARES VIDEO FROM NEW ALBUM AGING & ANNOUNCES INTIMATE SOLO SHOWS

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WATCH / SHARE "FIXING THE AGAIN" HERE
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“it is the clearest portrait of [Drew’s] own interiority; rich and brooding, yet painfully blunt.” - Paste

“The thoughtful lyricism and rich instrumentation of the record’s contents hint at a critical evaluation of time and a diaristic honesty about how it fits into the equation of the various causes in [Drew’s] life.” - FLOOD

Photo Credit: Richard Briant // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

Following the release of his most vulnerable, minimal solo album to date, Aging, Broken Social Scene’s co-founder and front man Kevin Drew is thrilled to announce upcoming live dates in support of the record. On sale this Friday December 1st, Drew will be playing select cities in Canada and across the U.S. in intimate shows alongside one other musician, his first solo shows in nine years. Full dates are below.

In addition to the tour announcement, he releases the official music video for album track “Fixing The Again.” Comprised of footage partially shot and directed by Drew, the video intercuts flashing vignettes of everyday life with brief scenes made up of a variety of characters. The video is bittersweet and reflective, capturing the true essence of the human experience. 

WATCH / SHARE "FIXING THE AGAIN" HERE
BUY / STREAM AGING HERE

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 and incredible 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.  

The record finds the typically declarative Drew asking more questions than ever; late-night ruminations make up the beating heart of Aging. Even the most hopeful songs on the album sound less like a diagnosis of the times than a distressed recognition – the voice of someone who has imparted advice to people for years accepting that they may not have listened.  There are times when it’s hard to know whether Drew is singing these songs to someone else or to himself. So much of the record is expressed outwardly to an audience – but given the sadness and loss at the core of the album, it’s possible these songs have become mantras for himself. 


FULL DATES: 
January 14 @ The Stage at St. Andrew’s / Halifax, NS
January 15 @ Trailside Music Hall / Charlottetown, PE
January 17 @ Shivering Songs (Wilmot United Church) / Fredericton, NB
January 19 @ Public Records / Brooklyn, NY 
January 20 @ Public Records / Brooklyn, NY 
January 21 @ Underground Arts / Philadelphia, PA 
January 23 @ SPACE / Evanston, IL
January 26 @ Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever / Los Angeles, CA
January 27 @ Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever / Los Angeles, CA

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DAN MANGAN SHARES ELSEWHERE VERSION OF “ALL MY PEOPLE”

WATCH / SHARE “ALL MY PEOPLE” (ELSEWHERE VERSION)” LYRIC VIDEO HERE
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“This sixth album moves the needle on again, while never losing sight of his brilliance as a songwriter... Being Somewhere carries a gentle wisdom, filled with kindness... It’s like being given a cozy sonic hug while the world’s storms rage outside.” - MOJO

“Full of kindness and empathy, the Vancouver songwriter's latest serves as a gentle reminder to appreciate what you have before it's gone.” - RANGE Magazine

“Being Somewhere showcases some of Mangan’s finest writing couched in some of the most atmospheric arrangements to appear in his catalogue. From the Spartan, piano-driven Just Know It with its subtle harmonies to All Roads driving atmospherics, the production is meticulous.” - Vancouver Sun
  

“Dan Mangan’s sixth album strikes a fine balance between the quiet intimacy of his best work and Bon Iver’s most fractalized folktronica... The likes of ‘Fire Escape’ and ‘All Roads’ provide warmth and immediacy without disrupting the delicate mood.” - Uncut

“All My People” (Elsewhere Version)” Single Art // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

After recently returning from a cross Canada tour supporting his JUNO Award nominated, Polaris Music Prize shortlisted, album Being Somewhere, singer-songwriter Dan Mangan shares with the third reimagined track from the record. “All My People”  is about dreaming of being near loved ones during the height of the pandemic. While the original album version explores the sonic scope of percussion, this new “elsewhere version” focuses more on hypnotic acoustic guitar, evoking an increased feeling of melancholy and intimacy. “I didn’t start with any particular plan,” Dan reflects on the song. “I just started deconstructing the song and exploring where else it might like to be constructed. I wrote this song in the depths of lockdown, wandering around my home, annoying my kids,” he continues. “It took forever to get the chords right. The lyrics right. I wrote several different choruses and bridges. Before it was even a real thing, it had lived several lives. My 40th birthday was looming in the distance. I pictured a party. This same home, full of people laughing. I pictured a huge pileup of shoes by the front door. Coats laid on the bed. It was one weird dream away.”

WATCH / SHARE “ALL MY PEOPLE” (ELSEWHERE VERSION)” LYRIC VIDEO HERE
BUY / STREAM “ALL MY PEOPLE” (ELSEWHERE VERSION)” HERE

MORE ABOUT BEING SOMEWHERE
Being Somewhere, Mangan’s sixth studio album, cuts incisively but never forgets its underlying thesis: It’s cool to care. Mangan arms the rebels in the crusade for tenderness. The album is a combative plea for mercy from a manic world and its effects on the psyche. Whittling his sharpest pen to date, Being Somewhere is marked by Mangan’s singular wit and a respectful deference to the quagmire of existence.

“I wanted this album to feel like the inside crook of a familiar elbow on the nape of your neck, a comforting embrace” says Mangan, “These songs are tenderhearted and unfurl like an overdue conversation with a dear friend. They essentially lay out where we’re at, how I’m doing, and how I think I can help."

571 emails. 100+ hours on the phone and thousands of text messages. A mere 3 days spent in-person together over two and a half years of long-distance work. Such a displaced recording process might make anyone question the concept of being anywhere at all, let alone being somewhere else.

WATCH / SHARE “JUST KNOW IT (ELSEWHERE VERSION)” LYRIC VIDEO HERE
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LISTEN TO DAN MANGAN TALK ABOUT BEING SOMEWHERE IN DEPTH ON CBC q HERE

This is how Dan Mangan and collaborator/producer Drew Brown (Radiohead, Beck) manifested Being Somewhere. All components were recorded in isolation and beamed up to the mothership. No piece of the puzzle ended up as expected, and each moment is the fruition of separate, yet conjoined, rabbit holes. 

“The hard part was waiting,” Mangan says of the long-distance process, “sometimes it took six weeks to resolve an issue that could have taken twenty minutes had we been together in a room. But Drew’s dedication and talent cannot be understated, and this music doesn’t sound like anything else I’m hearing these days."

WATCH / SHARE “ALL ROADS” (LYRIC VIDEO) HERE
WATCH / SHARE “JUST KNOW IT” (LYRIC VIDEO) HERE

Under the care of Drew Brown’s distinct touch, Being Somewhere forges sonics well beyond the tropes of modern folk music. Helming the project from Chicago, Brown sourced musical contributions from all over North America, the UK and Japan, including work from Joey Waronker (Beck, Atoms for Peace), Jason Falkner (Beck, St. Vincent), Thomas Bartlett (The National, Taylor Swift), Dave Okumu (Arlo Parks, Adele), Mary Lattimore (Kurt Vile, Sharon Van Etten), and Broken Social Scene frontman Kevin Drew.

WATCH / SHARE “FIRE ESCAPE” (MUSIC VIDEO) HERE

MORE ABOUT DAN MANGAN
Dan Mangan is a two-time JUNO Award-winning and two-time Polaris Music Prize-nominated musician and songwriter. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia with his wife and two sons. Mangan has toured extensively in North America, Europe & Australia. He has played Glastonbury and Jimmy Kimmel Live, collaborated with David Grohl, sold out Massey Hall and scored acclaimed soundtracks for television (Netflix, AMC) and feature films. In 2017, he co-founded Side Door, a community marketplace platform for the arts that seeks to democratize and decentralize the entertainment industry by allowing non-traditional spaces to be venues. Watch for Mangan and his Side Door partner Laura Simpson to appear on CBC TV’s Dragon’s Den on November 3. Being Somewhere is his sixth studio album.

BUY / STREAM BEING SOMEWHERE HERE


EUROPEAN TOUR DATES
Feb 22. Graz, AT - Orpheum
Feb 24. Prague, CZ - Café v Lese
Feb 25. Warsaw, PL - Hydrozagadka
Feb 26. Berlin, DE - Frannz Club
Feb 28. Copenhagen, DK - Hotel Cecil
Mar 1. Stockholm, SE - Nalen Klubb
Mar 3. Hamburg, DE - Nachtasyl
Mar 4. Amsterdam, NL - Paradiso
Mar 5. Antwerp, BE - Trix
Mar 6. London, UK - Omeara

Photo Credit : John Butler // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

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LAL’S NEW LP, SPECTACULAR, OUT THIS FRIDAY

Photo Credit: Diego Israel | Plastique Famille // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES


This Friday, LAL (Nicholas Murray and Rosina Kazi) will release their eighth album and film project, SPECTACULAR, which brings together amazingly talented artists whom they have worked with throughout the group’s 25 year history. Today, they are sharing the album’s title track.

About “Spectacular”, the Kazi says, “In the midst of the pandemic, while investigating my heart and spirit and a broken heart, I realized that we are incredible just in being ourselves, and that we don’t have to live in this attention oriented, hetero patriarchal world, that we are conditioned to believe in, even as Queers or weirdos. That we need to find balance between ourselves and the world around us. That grief is always present but so is joy and that love of the divine, and their love in us, is what’s most important.”

LISTEN / SHARE “SPECTACULAR” HERE
WATCH / SHARE “SPECTACULAR” PROMO TEASER HERE


The video teaser is part of a larger film from director José Garcia that will be released with the album. The project involved locations in Ontario, Alberta, and Nova Scotia. “A surreal series of dream scapes filmed throughout a year,” says Garcia. “The film was built slowly with a community of artists putting their skills together in a series of collaborations for each shoot. Some of the times the shoot involved 15 people and other times just two people. The locations were chosen carefully, with a strong emphasis on wardrobe and costumes matching the natural colours of each location. The season for each shoot was also an important factor.  

“One other important factor in this process was to not try to do everything in a short concentrated production schedule as is typical in the industry. Instead by doing sometimes one scene at a time, we were able to reflect and adjust our approach for the next set of scenes.  This period of reflection allowed for new people to be added and new energies to flow.”

LISTEN / SHARE “MOMENTS OF RELEASE” HERE
WATCH / SHARE “MOMENTS OF RELEASE” PROMO TEASER HERE


MORE ABOUT SPECTACULAR
Written in the second half of the pandemic, where COVID life continued up and down for two years in Toronto, LAL, after 27 years of being romantic partners, decided that in order to grow and be better to each other and their music, needed to separate. 

“#CovidLife! As the pandemic ensued for two long years, taking more and more lives, forcing us inside, yet again, SPECTACULAR began its inception, in the later part of lockdown, in Toronto,” says the band. “As LAL's founding members, we found ourselves going through both public and personal changes that would ultimately lay the building blocks for us to grow as humans but also thrive as artists, and our music would never be the same again.”

LISTEN / SHARE “I PRETEND IT’S RAINING” HERE

On SPECTACULAR, LAL says it was “born out of our time of extreme upheaval and uncertainty, forced us to work together to maintain, and transform each other as well as ourselves, for the better. Our trust in our friendship and love (though changed), had continued to move mountains, and add to the worlds we have already built to nurture and protect us for so long. The lyrics and music that came out of LAL as a result continues to manifest dreams and allow us to do what we do best. Because uplifting our love for each other, our fams and communities continue to find us strength in one another as we keep on being the artists, weirdos and people who find strength in ourselves. 

WATCH / SHARE “I PRETEND IT’S RAINING” PROMO TEASER HERE

For SPECTACULAR, LAL partnered with good friend and long-time collaborator Jose Garcia-Lozano to create a ‘Part 2’ to the Meteors Could Come Down album and film, which features new and old collaborators, who are all friends. Artists such as Ange Loft, Tannis Nielsen, Sedina Fiati,  Hannia Cheng, B. Soloman, Victoria Mata, Franny Galore-Wngz, Erum Khan, Jaek Eastcott, Kai Jackman, Max Zimmerman, Gautam Pinto, Easy Life Studios, Plastique, Shireen Fahimi, Melissa Vincent, and Noel Nanton of Typotherapy Design, helped make this album and film magical. Also with Yann Gracia who conceptualized, directed, and filmed an amazing live performance video by the quartet, with support from Felix Mendelssohn.

Musicians Viktor kei, Ian de Souza, and Jonathan Adjemian added to the healing process of making this album. Jean Martin, who mixed and helped with the very new sound that Murr has created by intimate recording sessions, the sharing of files online, sampling and working with ROSINA, who wrote most of the songs by themselves, in the early morning. 

This project is only a small reflection of the underground network LAL has cultivated for over 25 years. SPECTACULAR aims to celebrate each other, and the world that we have committed to, one that embraces love, equity, community, care, grief, anger, healing, fucked-up-ness and forgiveness. 

PRE-SAVE SPECTACULAR HERE

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SPECTACULAR TRACKLIST
01 Be Gentle
02 Moments Of Release
03 Each Other
04 I Know You Fool
05 I Pretend It’s Raining
06 Spectacular
07 The Way
08 To Give Into Love

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