“Know thyself” is the famous saying from ancient Greece, but how do we discover who we are and what we want to achieve? It’s even harder in today’s age, where we’re bombarded by advertising, guided by social media algorithms, and often face pressure from our peer groups to conform to standards that we never signed up for. How can we possibly know ourselves when so many external voices are telling us who and what to be?
Artists are naturally inclined not to conform and to push these boundaries, and that’s what we can see in the group show ‘Learning What Actually Feels Like Me’, which was held at Avivson Gallery in Highgate, North London – specifically, what it means to be a woman on this journey, in a patriarchal world, where women are more often pressured to conform to societal norms.
All eight artists bring their unique styles, and while they may employ different techniques and materials, they are all on a journey of self-discovery through creative expression. For some, this comes from abstraction; others prefer more figurative works; some choose to paint, others to collage. While the works in the show look very different, they have been brought together by this common theme.
Abstract art is often a raw expression of emotion, and we can see that in Mariia Denysenko’s work, where lines of red and blue leave empty spaces between them. After all, emotions do come in waves, and in these pieces we can see moments of both intensity and serenity.
It follows the paths set by the great abstract expressionists such as Helen Frankenthaler and Willem de Kooning, asking us to reflect on what we see within the colour balance and rhythm of the piece. When we look at a work by Mark Rothko, are we looking at it, or is it peering back at us? When we spend time trying to understand a work by Mariia Denysenko, are we really the viewers or merely vessels for the painting itself, and the emotions it’s channelling through us?
Natalia Kungurova adds order to her abstraction with lines and patterns that reflect her inner emotional state, while leaving it open to the viewer to decide what to take away. While Maria Verner’s explosive works are about love and its power, a statement that’s particularly relevant when the news cycle appears to be one filled and driven by hate. Both artists explore the idea that we all perceive and manifest emotions differently, but we are still part of a broader community, and it’s this commonality we should focus on.
A few of the artists bring the abstract world closer to the real one we inhabit. Natasha Antipova-Kaploukhaya’s bold painting feels purely abstract; that is, until you notice the photograph of the two women lying down in the corner, as if relaxing after being overwhelmed by the emotive brush strokes that hang above them.
Did the photographic element come first, and is the painting a response to it? The way that Julie Cockburn weaves dots onto old photographs to give them a contemporary twist? Or is it a distortion of the original source material with paint, as Gerhard Richter does? Is there more of the image that we can no longer see? It’s this tension that makes us want to learn more and create our own narrative around the work.
Veronika Khacaturian brings humour into her more abstract pieces, where a large swirling, and mainly white mass on a green background is titled ‘Dropped the wedding cake on to the billiard table’, and another is ‘Spilled borscht’. It pokes fun at the idea that we humans search for the image, even when there isn’t one, much like how we see faces in clouds – as if her paintings are functioning as a type of Rorschach test. By tapping into our instinct for pattern recognition and subverting it, Khachaturyan brings her original take on contemporary abstraction.
These works may be playful, but there is a darker twist: ‘dropped a nuclear bomb’ hints at the febrile state of geopolitics and makes us question whether this abstract work is actually a view of a post-apocalyptic wasteland from above. Much like the work of Japanese photographer Ishiuchi Miyako, who captured everyday items like a simple dress in the remnants of Hiroshima after a nuclear bomb was dropped on the city. There’s humour and horror in Veronika Khacaturian’s work.
Anastasia Klimova’s ghostly figures appear to be fading either in or out of existence, as if they are traces of memories that can be reached but never realised. Much like how our memories change over time, changing depending on whether we access them frequently or rarely. It also hints at how women are often deemed invisible, ignored by men who want the attention centred on them.
Just like Edvard Munch’s famous ‘The Scream’ was a figure representing our attempts to block the sound of a scream tearing across the landscape, are these figures ghosts of memories we’d rather forget or reminders of the past that haunt us, as we see in the works of Kathe Kollwitz? Do we learn from our past failures if we remember them, or are we doomed to repeat them if we forget? It’s up to us to decide how we tackle this catch-22.
Inessa Garder’s collage feels almost futuristic as we gaze down a white avenue, inspired by her memories of Moscow’s New Arbat Avenue. The papers used in the work are drawn from different sources, yet they create an architectural vision that captures both the rectilinear nature of buildings and the chaos of a busy street filled with movement and energy.
Marie Lourier is the sole photographer among the artists and uses rotting fruit and vegetables, a symbolism common in historical vanitas paintings, to reference the fragility of life, creating a tension between beauty and decay, and reflecting on how women are often valued for their beauty and later discarded when that beauty is perceived to fade.
It also reflects how women are very rarely the aggressors in this world but are often those who suffer the most in times of war, famine and drought. We see this in women being some of the most vulnerable refugees, and even in stories from Ancient Greece, where women were punished due to the capricious nature of the Greek Gods. Bringing this to modern times, Lourier references the story of the Little Mermaid, who lost her voice for love, and another story of a woman being punished for wanting to live her life as she chooses.
All eight artists remind us that self-discovery is in the journey. Life is about constantly re-assessing who we are and rediscovering elements of ourselves we had once deemed lost. By doing so, they ask us to question the values we hold dear and whether we should live life differently. Society often tells women what they should be; these eight artists are deciding to reject that and figure it out for themselves through art, creativity and expression.
Richard Gadd’s 2024 series Baby Reindeer was an unexpected hit. It received critical acclaim, won six Emmy awards, and was the talk of the internet for weeks on end. His follow-up, Half Man, is just as intriguing.
A BBC/HBO production, the psychological drama chronicles the complicated relationship between two men who grew up as brothers. While it’s an uncomfortable watch, it’s also the kind of show that stays with you. So much so that fans are wondering whether a sequel might be on the way.
Half Man Season 2 Release Date
At the time of writing, there are no plans for Half Man season 2. Creator and star Richard Gadd confirmed as much while talking to Radio Times.
“It just suddenly occurred to me, while I was writing it, that it should exist as its own piece of work and not something that can kind of extend and extend,” Gadd said.
While he confessed he thought about expanding the series, it seems like one season is all we’re going to get.
Half Man Cast
Richard Gadd as Ruben Pallister
Stuart Campbell as young Ruben
Jamie Bell as Niall Kennedy
Mitchell Robertson as young Niall
Marianne McIvor as Maura Pallister
Neve McIntosh as Lori Kennedy
Charlie De Melo as Alby Safadi
Bilal Hasna as young Alby
Tim Downie as Daniel
Anjli Mohindra as Ava
What Is Half Man About?
Half Man centres on Ruben and Niall, who grow up as brothers despite not being biologically related. It’s set across roughly 30 years, from 1980s Glasgow to present day.
The series begins with adult Niall preparing for his wedding when Ruben makes an appearance. His arrival creates tension, and a violent incident sends the narrative spiraling backward through their shared history.
As the show moves between timelines, it reveals how their bond formed and why it became destructive. Viewers also learn how deeply the two men shaped each other’s identities.
The series explores masculinity, trauma, repression, violence, loyalty, and emotional dependency, which makes it equal parts intense and compelling. Add excellent performances into the mix, and this is the kind of media that stays with you.
Half Man season 2 might not happen, but we’re only halfway through the show, so there’s still a big chunk of story to look forward to. In the UK, you can stream episodes weekly on BBC iPlayer. The finale will drop in late May.
Are There Other Shows Like Half Man?
If you like Half Man, check out Gadd’s other series, Baby Reindeer, available on Netflix. Global hit Adolescence might be up your alley as well.
Other shows with similar vibes include True Detective, Sons of Anarchy, Snowfall, The Bear, Peaky Blinders, and This Is England ‘86.
INDEX – Biennial of Art and Technology has returned to Braga for its 2026 edition, bringing together artists, theorists and musicians exploring the relationship between technology and contemporary systems of power. Running through 17 May, the biennial spans exhibitions, performances and talks across the Portuguese city, with this year’s central exhibition curated by Joel Valabrega.
Valabrega’s exhibition approaches the theme of power without reducing it into generalised narratives: authority seems staged, control is represented in monstrous figures or encoded in the hum of drone recordings. The programme features work by artists including Hito Steyerl, Gabriel Abrantes, Cemile Sahin and P. Staff, alongside a major presentation by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Raven Chacon, whose work examines drone surveillance within Native American communities. The exhibition avoids providing fixed answers, prioritising quickly circulating symbolism and constantly shifting meaning.
The wider biennial programme expands these ideas through newly commissioned performances, live events and discussions, including collaborations involving Forensic Architecture, Lawrence Abu Hamdan and McKenzie Wark. Positioned at the intersection of contemporary art and technological inquiry, INDEX continues to build a platform for artists engaging with the political and psychological conditions of today’s digital culture.
Babehoven – the Hudson, NY-based duo of singer-songwriter Maya Bon and producer Ryan Albert – have returned with a new single, ‘Blue Around You’. The gently ambling track arrives ahead of their upcoming tour with Ray Bull, which kicks off tomorrow (May 12). Check it out below.
The new track was recorded with producer Phil Weinrobe and a crew of musicians including Oliver Hill, Zosha Warpeha, Dylan Nowik, Jared Samuel, Ellington Peet, and Nick Kinsey. In a statement, Babehoven said: “Standing on a bridge seeing apartments illuminated around you, being understood by a friend who knows your story, witnessing someone pull their life together like tenderly tying a shoelace; these are all moments where we find each other in the soup of it all and choose to really see one another and stay. I see the blue around you as if we carry the hard times we go through around and within us like a glow.”
Only three episodes in, and Apple TV horror comedy Widow’s Bay is already generating online buzz. Turns out, its combination of coziness and scares makes for delightful viewing. The show’s near-perfect Rotten Tomatoes score is a testament to that.
Created by Katie Dippold and starring Matthew Rhys, Widow’s Bay welcomes viewers to a town where uncanny things keep happening, to the dismay of the skeptical mayor. Is this the kind of premise that could keep the show going for years? Here’s what we know so far.
Widow’s Bay Season 2 Release Date
At the time of writing, Apple TV hasn’t renewed the horror comedy for additional episodes. That said, the series premiered only recently, so there’s still time for an announcement down the line. The streaming service might simply be waiting to assess viewership before making a decision.
If everything lines up, Widow’s Bay season 2 could arrive in 2027.
Widow’s Bay Cast
Matthew Rhys as Tom Loftis
Kate O’Flynn as Patricia
Kevin Carroll as Bechir
Dale Dickey as Rosemary
Kingston Rumi Southwick as Evan
Stephen Root as Wyck
What Is Widow’s Bay About?
The fictional town of Widow’s Bay has no Wi-Fi, unreliable cell service, and residents who believe terrifying local legends are real.
Matthew Rhys plays Tom Loftis, the mayor, who doesn’t really believe in superstition. Instead, he wants to transform the town into a profitable tourist destination. Too bad it’s tough to modernise a community that seems cursed.
Against all odds, tourism finally picks up, but it happens right as the town’s supposedly ridiculous folklore begins to come true. Think supernatural fog, killer clowns, disappearances, and undead sightings.
The show blends supernatural horror with satire and small-town dysfunction. This makes it a perfect watch for viewers who like their comedy with a side of creepiness.
While Widow’s Bay season 2 might not be a sure thing yet, the good reviews and online chatter are positive signs. If the series continues to build its audience, the story could easily expand over multiple installments.
For now, you can catch episodes weekly on Apple TV. The finale will drop mid-June.
Are There Other Shows Like Widow’s Bay?
Enjoying Widow’s Bay? Shows with similar vibes include Twin Peaks, It: Welcome to Derry, Stranger Things, From, What We Do in the Shadows, Shining Vale, and Ghosts.
Red Hot Chili Peppers have sold their entire recorded output to Warner Music Group in a deal worth more than $300 million. As Billboard reports, the deal includes their 13 studio albums, allowing the label to collect all future income generated by streaming, radio play, sales, and licensing.
In 2015, the band sold their publishing rights to Hipgnosis Songs Fund – now known as Recognition Music Group – for a reported $150 million. Just today, it was revealed that Sony Music Publishing reached an agreement to acquire Recognition’s entire catalogue of over 45,000 songs as part of a multi-billion dollar deal.
The first single, ‘Lost Boys’, arrived on June 25, alongside a Renaissance-themed video starring Bridgers as an elf surrounded by knights. Exactly one month before the release of the album, Bridgers made a surprise appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, performing the track alongside a group of young musicians.
How long has it been since Phoebe Bridgers’ last album?
It’s been six years since Bridgers released Punisher, her sophomore album. In the couple of years that followed, she appeared on tracks by Taylor Swift, SZA, the Killers, the National, and MUNA, among others, and contributed to the Jack Antonoff-curated soundtrack for Minions: The Rise of Gru. 2023 saw the reunion of boygenius and the release of the group’s debut album, the record, which they toured throughout the year before going on hiatus in February 2024.
When did Phoebe Bridgers return to the spotlight?
On May 7, 2026, Bridgers announced she would be playing a show in Roswell, New Mexico, the following day. Flyers promoting the show indicated no recording devices would be allowed inside during the concert. The same was true for a subsequent show in Lubbock, Texas, announced on May 9 for the same night. Accompanying Bridgers onstage was frequent collaborator Christian Lee Hutson, who played guitar, harmonica, and percussion.
What did Phoebe Bridgers perform at the surprise shows?
Bridgers debuted new music during both shows. The first show featured three new songs, and night two got four, half of which she played during the previous night. Though devices had to be locked in Yondr pouches, you can see the setlists for each night here and here.
What did the new songs sound like?
Reddit user BSismyname described the new songs as “f**king great and also very sad.” One of the new songs reportedly addressed the 2023 death of Bridgers’ father, while another might be about her relationship with Bo Burnham. Another attendee said that Bridgers “experimented with new vocal techniques,” with BSismyname noting that she was “more ‘on her voice,’” and that she sounded “less breathy and with more power.”
Did Phoebe Bridgers tease a new album during the shows?
Bridgers didn’t mention a new album during the shows, but there were some hints. Fans received a small piece of a painting in the pouches their phones were locked in, with some speculating that when combined, the fragments reveal Bridgers’ next album artwork. New merch also seemed to feature rumored lyrics from a new song: “Now I can’t see any stars in the sky/ When a dream comes true, a fantasy dies.” Alien imagery was a theme throughout the shows, which would explain why the first show took place in Roswell.
Is Phoebe Bridgers going on tour in support of the album?
Following a string of pop-up shows culminating in a sold-out performance at New York’s Madison Square Garden, Bridgers will go on tour from September through December. Special guest Alex G will support the North American shows, while former Black Country, New Road vocalist Isaac Wood is the opening act for the EU dates.
Who worked on Phoebe Bridgers’ new album?
While the full album credits have yet to be revealed, ‘Lost Boys’ features a host of notable collaborators, including Bridgers’ boygenius bandmates Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus on vocals (along with Caroline Shaw); Alex G on drums and voice memo; Jack Antonoff on electric guitar, synths, drums, and vocoder; Bright Eyes’ Nate Walcott on trumpets; Blake Mills on synths; Chris Thile on mandolin; and Christian Lee Hutson on acoustic guitar. Bo Burnham is credited as a lyricist on the track.
Santa Fe, New Mexico, is home to one of the most significant art movements of the past century, yet one that remains surprisingly unfamiliar to audiences outside the United States. Beginning in the 1960s, a generation of Native American artists trained at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) forged a new visual language: culturally grounded, formally ambitious, and unapologetically modern. These five paintings, each held by specialist Santa Fe gallery Windsor Betts Art Brokerage, offer a window into a movement that deserves far wider recognition.
Fritz Scholder: American Portrait #43 (1982)
Fritz Scholder (Luiseño, 1937–2005) famously vowed never to paint a Native American, yet he spent his career doing exactly that, but on terms no one had seen before. American Portrait #43 is a commanding example of his late style: a figure rendered in deep magentas and blues, abstraction and portraiture fused in a single composition of dynamic tension. Scholder studied under Wayne Thiebaud at Sacramento City College before joining the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe as an instructor, where he absorbed Pop Art’s visual language and turned it against a century of sentimental Native imagery. His paintings forced viewers to confront the gap between the mythologised Indian and the real one, and his influence on every artist who followed him in the contemporary Native American canon is difficult to overstate.
T.C. Cannon: Hopi with Manta (1976)
T.C. Cannon (Kiowa/Caddo, 1946–1978) was Scholder’s most brilliant student. Hopi with Manta is a Japanese woodblock print depicting a Hopi woman with the formal composure of a Renaissance portrait, framed by geometric patterning that draws from both Indigenous design and European printmaking traditions. Cannon’s genius lay in his ability to position Native subjects as participants in the global art conversation, not objects within it. He painted Native figures listening to records, sitting beneath Van Goghs, wearing traditional jewellery with contemporary clothing. His death in a car accident at thirty-one cut short one of the most promising careers in American art. The works that survive, including this woodblock from his collaboration with Japanese master printmakers, are treasured for both their power and their rarity.
Kevin Red Star: Crow Warrior Visions (c. 1987–1989)
Kevin Red Star (Apsáalooke/Crow, b. 1943) has devoted more than five decades to painting the culture, ceremonies, and people of the Crow Nation. Crow Warrior Visions presents five warriors in full ceremonial regalia, including bone hairpipe breastplates, eagle feathers, and face paint, standing in powerful formation against a luminous golden field. Every element carries specific meaning within Crow tradition, yet the painting’s bold palette and graphic composition feel unmistakably modern. A member of IAIA’s inaugural class in 1962, Red Star studied under Allan Houser before continuing at the San Francisco Art Institute. His work is both a cultural record and a living artistic statement, affirming the persistence of Apsáalooke traditions through contemporary visual language.
Earl Biss: People of the Big Sky (1986)
Earl Biss (Apsáalooke/Crow, 1947–1998) was Red Star’s classmate at IAIA, his second cousin, and his polar opposite as a painter. Where Red Star pursued precision and cultural documentation, Biss channelled his Crow heritage through sweeping expressionistic landscapes alive with light and movement. People of the Big Sky is one of his most commanding works: a monumental oil on canvas in which figurative form dissolves into luminous colour, evoking the vast skies and open plains of Montana. Biss studied under Scholder and Houser at IAIA before earning a scholarship to the San Francisco Art Institute. His friend Red Star called him “the catalyst, like the agitator in a washing machine”, a description that captures both the energy of his brushwork and the force of his personality.
John Nieto: Bead Maker
John Nieto (1936–2018) brought a Fauvist sensibility to Native American subject matter that was entirely his own. Of Hispanic and Native American descent, Nieto grew up across New Mexico and Colorado before studying at Southern Methodist University and travelling to Paris, where he discovered Matisse, Derain, and the explosive colour of early twentieth-century French painting. Bead Maker places a single figure at the centre of a celebration of Native material culture and artistic heritage, the composition alive with Nieto’s signature electric blues, magentas, and greens. His bold, graphic style, once described as giving Native subjects “the visual power of a Warhol with the cultural weight of a history painting”, brought Southwest art to international audiences and earned him a painting in the Reagan White House.
These five works represent a fraction of a movement that fundamentally altered American art, one rooted in Santa Fe, where IAIA launched careers and a network of specialist galleries continues to sustain them. For those wanting to explore further, Windsor Betts’ collection spans the full breadth of the contemporary Native American and Southwest art canon, offering a rare depth of expertise in a field that deserves far wider international recognition.
For Maria Clara Laet, a Rio de Janeiro-born tap dancer and historian, the rhythmic landscape of the Americas is not a collection of disparate genres. Rather, it is a singular, branching tree, believe it or not.
Laet, whose multifaceted career has taken her from the high-energy parades of Brazilian blocos to the prestigious stages of New York City’s Apollo Theater, is currently at the forefront of a movement that bridges Brazilian cultural heritage with the technical precision of American tap dance.
Laet’s artistic philosophy, as a dancer, is deeply informed by her academic background in history. She views tap dance and Brazilian musical traditions, like Samba and various Afro-Brazilian rhythms, as kin.
“Brazilian rhythms and tap dance share a deeply rooted history,” Laet explains. “They are profoundly shaped by West African music and dance traditions. We can think of the two as different branches of the same tree, emerging from a shared cultural foundation but evolving in different territories.”
Her work seeks to synthesize these parallels, focusing on elements common to both traditions: a grounded connection to the earth, the dynamic structure of call-and-response, and the spiritual dimension of percussive movement. By integrating these elements, Laet provides a sophisticated, scholarly approach to rhythm that transcends simple choreography.
Laet’s ability to mobilize large audiences was forged in the heat of Brazil’s Carnaval, where she performed for crowds; thousands of people. Her experience with the Unidos do Swing bloco, a parade-style ensemble that merged classic Brazilian anthems with jazz, proved to be a pivotal training ground.
“Street parties during Brazil’s Carnaval have an indescribable energy,” she notes. “Adding tap dance to that moving, parade-style format was a risk, but the crowd’s response was incredible. Many had never seen tap before, so I was proud to help introduce this art form to a new audience.”
This capacity to adapt to diverse environments has served her well in the United States. Since relocating to New York, Laet has become a foundational figure in kamrDANCE, an ensemble dedicated to “multidisciplinary musical storytelling.” In her role with the company, she operates beyond the traditional definition of a dancer, often singing, playing percussion (cymbals), while performing complex tap choreography simultaneously.
Currently, Laet is preparing for the highly anticipated premiere of The Mercy Velvet Project at the Festival of Arts and Ideas in New Haven, CT, premiering June 26 and 27.
The Mercy Velvet Project is a multidisciplinary rock opera and dance performance created bykamrDANCE artistic director, Alexis Robbins. The performance group reimagines the 1999 album “Live in Vain” by the band Mercy Velvet through a fusion of live music (bass, guitar, electronics), tap dance choreography as percussion, contemporary dance and vocals. The show explores themes of human connection, community, and finding meaning, and is a queer and femme-led production.
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The performance will be an embodied re-creation of the studio album, performed in order of the tracks on the album, as the work explores what makes us human and our collective need for community to survive. Together, the musicians and dancers will move together as one.
By exploring existential themes of human connection, the performance demands stamina, requiring Laet to remain on stage for 90 minutes of continuous, high-intensity movement, performing songs from the project’s album.
“The preparation has been focused on conditioning,” Laet says. “The choreography created by Alexis Robbins is exceptionally demanding. We are running the show back-to-back to build stamina and muscle memory while engaging in character development sessions to deepen the intention behind every movement.”
For Laet, the evolution of her craft is inextricably linked to the strength of her professional alliances. Whether collaborating with Isabella Serricella on the movement piece Waters of August or partnering with percussionist Thiago Trad at the Rhythmic Arts Center, Laet views collaboration as a catalyst for innovation.
As a recipient of the prestigious Tap City Award and a featured artist in upcoming 92NY initiatives, Laet’s trajectory suggests that her unique synthesis of historical research and performance art is poised to leave a lasting mark on the international dance community.
“Collaboration with other artists expands horizons and the perceived limits of the universes we create in our minds,” she said. “I make sure that the artists I collaborate with are kind human beings, because I truly believe that together we can go further than we can go alone.”
As Laet explains: “Whenever I am creating a piece there is a web of references, metaphors, personal experiences and inspirations weaved together in my brain that shape the work into what it can be. The possibilities are multiplied exponentially when weaving another person’s creative universes into my own and subsequently a richer and more diverse substrate can be created for a piece to grow in and flourish.”
Broken Social Scene’s new album, Remember the Humans, urges you to think of music in organic terms. The title of the Canadian collective’s first album in nearly a decade came from Charles Spearin, who initially framed it as a joke: it sounds like the AI version of their seminal 2002 LP You Forgot It in People. The multi-instrumentalist, who helped bring the record’s magnetic swell of ideas into their final form alongside Kevin Drew and David Newfeld (the producer behind that album and its self-titled 2005 follow-up), discusses some of the inspirations behind it with a similarly self-aware cheekiness: they are scientific metaphors for the amorphous fluidity of Broken Social Scene’s internal structure, but they’re also just a way of saying their return is nothing but a natural process, a result of old friends reorienting themselves around the present moment. The songs get lost in the haze of personal memory, eulogize individual people, and put relationships under the microscope, but the group still has a unique way of reveling in abstraction: finding relief from the burden of identity and emotional truth in every cliche. It’s a joyously universal kind of homecoming.
We caught up with Broken Social Scene’s Charles Spearin to talk about compromise, mycorrhizal networks, photosynthesis, and other inspirations behind their new album, Remember the Humans.
Migration patterns and critical mass
It’s been almost 10 years since our last real album, and the common question is, “Why now? What has happened?” My feeling is it’s not really so much a decision, but kind of a tipping point. There was a threshold that got crossed. Everybody was wanting to do it, and there’s this time in a migration, like a bird migration, where all the birds reach a critical mass before they cross a big body of water, whether it’s geese or warblers or whatever. There’s this park in Ohio called McGee Marsh, and all the birds congregate there in the early spring. They’re there right now, I’m sure. And then something happens where they all move together, and it’s not one decision. It’s this collective unconscious that pushes them all together, and they fly across to Point Pelee National Park in Ontario, and they all arrive en masse over a few weeks. It’s a spectacular moment.
I feel like with Broken Social Scene, to use this metaphor, there was just some kind of percolating energy. In the music business, when you’ve been in it for a long time, there’s a tour cycle where you write music, record music, release the music, tour and tour, and then you take a break to regroup. There’s a seasonal cycle, and for us, it’s a little bit longer, but I feel like the daylight has gotten to be just the right length, and we’re all ready to move. All of this is just to say that it’s hard to put your finger on why we made an album now; there was just something collective that pulled us together. If you watch a starling murmuration, all the birds in the sky, they make these. You don’t know if there’s a leader or what’s going on up there, but there’s this collective dance that appears as a single unit. I like to think of us like that. I don’t know if it’s true, but that’s what I like to think about.
You said it’s hard to pinpoint why, but what would you point to as the moment where you felt that collective energy rising back up?
For me, personally, there was a sense of vision. We got together to write a bunch of music, just to see what happens. We all got together at Kevin’s house out in the country, and I rented a bunch of recording equipment and brought my recording equipment. The idea was just to jam and record all of it and see what’s going on, so we spent days just coming up with ideas. Listening back through it all, I would go back and highlight some of the moments that I thought were interesting and put them all into a folder. And then there was this excitement that came from that. It’s like, “Oh, that part’s really good right there. That’s really good, and maybe it could connect with that.” So it was like all these kinds of birds or fish, whatever migratory thing coming together, like, “I feel like we’ve actually got something here. I think it’s time to move.” All these individual decisions came together to turn into motion.
Compromise
That’s always an overarching theme with a band like Broken Social Scene. What was it like navigating it this time around? Was it especially important, or something to avoid?
Compromise has always been one of the defining characteristics of the band. I have to be careful saying that, because compromise has two different meanings. You don’t have enough money, or you don’t have enough time, so the project gets compromised, and it becomes worse than it should be. Or if you’re building a ship, and then it smashes into an iceberg, then the integrity of the ship is compromised. There’s that meaning of the word, and that’s more like there’s some concession being given. But with Broken Social Scene, I almost picture it like a Venn diagram with all the different people in the band and all their different tastes. They all overlap in some way, but we don’t all like the same thing exactly. So there’s this constant sense of pushing and pulling and almost campaigning with other members of the band, saying, “I really like this idea, but this person doesn’t like it so much, can you help me pull this one forward?” Artistic compromise is valid and real and can create something that I think is bigger than any individual idea.
That’s what I love about Broken Social Scene: we tend to create things that nobody in the band really likes entirely, but everybody understands that it’s a bigger picture, so our tastes get pulled and stretched into shapes. We end up with something that’s wholly unique and not a product of any one of us. It’s very different from a singer-songwriter who has a vision for their song. When we write music together, we always leave space for other musicians to come in, as in, we’ll just leave an X there, and we don’t know what that X is gonna be. Evan Cranley’s gonna come in, and he’ll write some trombone parts, but we’re gonna leave that space for that to happen. We’re continually, intentionally leaving space for each other, even though all of us have lots of ideas all the time. That kind of compromise I think is extremely healthy, but difficult. It’s why we take long breaks, because all of us have artistic vision, so all of us go out and release albums on our own. But I think we’re better as a group than we are as individuals.
Is there an example that comes to mind of either you ceding space to someone else’s understanding of a vision of a song, or maybe someone else leaving space for your idea to flourish at any point on the record?
Nothing jumps to mind, because there was so much of it. All of the stages for us are quite blurry – the writing and the recording and the mixing, they all blur from one to the next. It’s not like we can close one chapter and then open the next chapter. But Dave Newfeld and Kevin Drew and I were the three who saw this album to the finish line. And three is a good number to work things out. If it was all of us in the room together, it would be really, really challenging. But Kevin definitely had his vision of the record, and I had – maybe not a vision of the whole record, but I had strong attachments to certain ideas that weren’t maybe fitting into his vision. And then Dave Newefeld also loved certain aspects and didn’t want to let go of these, so we had a ton of discussions about how the record should be as a whole, how we want to make sure that everybody is represented. And we argued quite a bit, but I feel like that strengthens you and makes you a better person in a way. But all of us definitely had to let go of some attachments. There were musical motifs and things that I loved that didn’t make it onto this record, and the same is true for everybody else in this band.
Collectively, do you feel like there was less of an impulse to pull back with this record, in terms of layers of ideas and instrumentation?
Yeah. There were several surprises for us in the making of this record. There were so many people involved. For example, Lisa Lobsinger and Leslie Feist, they came to us with songs that were half-written or three-quarters written out of the blue, and said, “Hey, this is a song that I’ve been trying to make into a thing for a long time.” Maybe this could be a Broken Social Scene song, maybe we could work with this. Those were wonderful opportunities, because we’re in our own little world for a while, and then all of a sudden, this semi-formed idea land, and we all get excited about it and talk about how we can reshape it, or play with it, or honor the core of it, but still allow it to represent a collective rather than an individual. In that sense, these gifts from other musicians really broaden the spectrum of sort of color on the record. I think if you listen to Lisa sing her song, ‘Relief’, and Leslie’s song, ‘What Happens Next’, they don’t quite match the rest of the album so perfectly, and I think that’s terrific. It’s more like a spectrum of music rather than an identity in music, and I love that. We had to be constantly pushing and pulling with this notion of identity versus spectrum.
Care Bears
It was funny, Kevin and I were working together at Kevin’s house out in the country. I had my computer and my little studio set up there. It wasn’t a complete studio like Dave Neufeld’s studio, which was half an hour drive away. So Kevin and I would work a little bit at his place, and then we would send files back and forth to Dave Neufeld at his studio. One time we were working in the afternoon, and Kevin excitedly comes up the stairs, to where the computer is set up, and I’m working away on something, and he puts down this giant cardboard box on the floor, and he’s just like, “It’s here!” [laughs] And then he opened the box, and he pulled out all these Care Bear stuffies, a whole row. He said, “I think this is it, I think I got the complete collection.” And then he lined them up along the back of the couch, so that they’re all staring at us, so to speak, the whole time. Kevin is just a strange, wonderful person. He just is full of surprises. For the rest of the whole mixing session, we’d look over and there would be this row of Care Bears looking at us.
Care Bears is not my generation of television. I was born in 1972, so I was pre-Care Bears. My kids were born in the early 2000s, so they’re post-Care Bears. I’ve seen the Care Bears show a couple times, and I get the gist of it. It’s a bunch of different animals with different personalities, and then they come together and do the Care Bear stare and solve all the problems of the world. I just can picture them there: some of them are grumpy, some of them are shy, some of them are goofy, but they’re all valid in their own way. Each bear is distinct, but their differences don’t create tension, they cover a whole wide range of emotions. Combined, they have a broader spectrum of caring, and maybe I’m going too far with this metaphor, but I do feel like all the people in the band are caring people, and when we all get together, the spectrum of – our love, maybe, to be a little cheesy – is broader and more intense.
If you listen to the lyrics of the songs, and you listen to the moods of the songs, they touch on real problems. They touch on addiction, suicide, loss, doubt, aging, the fear of irrelevance. There’s all these really complicated, heavy subjects in these songs. The emotion is real, and if you think of emotions as a kind of a projectable force, then all of us coming together, it’s like we’re trying to give rays of giving a fuck. Like, “We give a fuck, so hear us out.”
Photosynthesis
All of us, as band members, have been playing music for a long time, we’ve played a lot of shows. A lot of the people in the band, even in high school, were in theater programs and things like this, and we all have this kind of applause addiction where we need to be validated through an audience. I wish it wasn’t true. I feel like we should be altruistic in our music and make the music live its own complete life, but the fact is that we want people to like it, and we want people to tell us that they like it. So the photosynthesis analogy in this is the sunlight of an audience – to play for an audience, is such a nourishing force. It turns into energy, just like photosynthesis turns sunlight into energy for the plant. I feel like playing for an audience – or not even live situations, but having people listen to your music and respond to it, is energizing. It makes us feel relevant and useful, and that’s a big reason why we do things. Unheard music is like a flower in a dark closet. It dies. There’s no music there if nobody hears it. I feel so much gratitude for the attention that we get for this band.
Maybe this idea ties back to compromise, in terms of being one of the reasons you really wouldn’t want to make concessions when it comes to the live show.
As we’re preparing for this tour coming up and learning how to play these songs live, because a lot of this music that we recorded had overdubs and was done over long periods of time, we’re having to reinvent all these songs, which is not unusual for us. We’ve been getting together at the rehearsal space, and it’s really exciting when it works because these songs are really feeling good. The compromise doesn’t feel like compromise at this point. It feels like we all want the same thing, and it feels more like true collaboration. Everybody’s adding their part to this giant piece of music. We’re all getting the feeling in our chest, and we’re excited to play it live, so that other people might feel it in their chest as well. It’s a good feeling right now. Of course, when we’re rehearsing and it doesn’t sound so good and some parts are wrong or missing, then it’s deflating. That’s part of the job, too; there is a lot of getting through the frustration of moments that don’t work. But we all know where we’re headed, and we know that these songs are gonna sound good live.
Mycorrhizal networks
I’m sure we can get pretty abstract with it, but it also more directly made me think of the song ‘Life Within the Ground’.
There is a link there, yeah. Mycorrhizal networks are basically how trees communicate with each other, through systems of fungus. There is a book called The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben, and it’s a very compelling book about how trees communicate with each other. I was trying to think of a metaphor for all of the underground help that we get as a band. People who don’t get appreciated so much, but are so essential to the health and nutrients of us. At this point, Broken Social Scene is like an old-growth forest. We’ve been around for a long time, and we’ve made so many connections over the years of people who support us, like our families, my wife, all our partners, our parents, the local community. We talk about our record label, our management, our agents, all the writers like yourself, all the people who helped support us over the years. It’s such a profound and vast network of support at this stage in our lives that it’s hard not to think of the band without thinking of all the supporters as well. Maybe being compared to fungus isn’t flattering, but it’s my sort of cheeky way of saying that there’s a lot of unseen support for this whole project.
This includes some of the little sapling bands and artists that are around in Toronto. I go to see bands all the time. There’s Dorothea Paas, Eliza Niemi, Shirley Hurt. There’s a band called Bernice. Charlotte Cornfield, of course. Louie Short, Luca Kaplowski. Felicity Williams has a project called You Can Can, which is super glitchy and arty and weird. There’s just so much music happening around Toronto that I feel it keeps everybody alive, and it makes you feel like you’re in a hopeful situation, like the next generation of music is good. There’s no problem here when it comes to the creation of new music. All that feels supportive – not like they’re all supporting us, but we are supported by them through inspiration.
When you’re deep into the process of writing and recording, is there a part of you that’s maybe tuning out some of that inspiration, and it starts to feel a little more isolated and above ground?
It does, and that’s why I have to constantly sort of remember to look underground and see where it’s all coming from. When we get together and write songs and play music on stage, we feel like, “It’s us, we’re Broken Social Scene. Look at us.” But if you look at the bigger picture, there’s so much more to any artist. Any band, any person has all of their influences and all their support systems. You have to actually, intentionally stop looking at the forest and look at the nutrients. It’s just good to appreciate all the efforts that go into making your life what it is when you’re being successful in some way.
Memes
The word “meme” was coined by Richard Dawkins, who’s a famous geneticist and mostly known for being an outspoken atheist. When he coined the word meme, he wasn’t talking about the internet jokes and things like that that it means today, which is kind of perfect, because that’s the way memes work – they grow and change and they adapt. But his idea of a meme is kind of like an animal that has to adapt genetically to survive, it has to be able to reproduce, it has to adapt to new surroundings. I think a lot about memetic fitness. His example might be religions like Catholicism or Buddhism or any religion; they have such strong memetic fitness in the sense that they have churches, and they have all these defense mechanisms. These are what he would say would be memes that are 2,000 years old and have survived by adapting and changing to the world around them.
This idea of memetic fitness can be applied into so many different situations. Earlier, I was talking about how we got together and just spent days and days writing and writing and writing and writing, coming up with all these different ideas. Well, the way that these ideas survived – some of them survived and some of them did not, and it’s not necessarily that the best ideas survived and the worst ideas died. It’s more like, whichever one was most suited to the environment survived. So, if somebody were to write something that was more free jazz or blues rock, something that was just not in our environment, it would get weeded out. All these ideas naturally evolve through a process of natural selection, through these filters of all of our different minds, all of our different attentions. I wrote it down as kind of as a joke, but also because it’s something I like to spend a lot of time thinking about, how ideas need to proliferate and adapt to the world. And Broken Social Scene itself is a meme, we’re an idea. We’re a bunch of people, but everybody has their own kind of story around what we are, and that takes on a life of its own. We try our best to try and keep our identity as a band somewhat on brand with what we want and somewhat aligned with the truth of who we are. It’s beyond us at this point, and it’s constantly changing.
How do you remember the environment of the record shifting over time?
It was definitely something to watch, rather than something to control. We all had our intentions to pull the record this way or push the record this way, and had this tug of war between us. But given that there were so many influences, so many factors in terms of self-imposed deadlines, sound quality, sound sources – there’s an infinite number of possibilities now when you’re mixing. A record can go in any kind of direction if you grab the reins, but in this sense, we were all trying to hold onto the steering wheel at the same time and pulling it in different directions. If you look at a sunflower, everything about it is designed to make more sunflowers – it’s prickly stem, it’s bright yellow colors to attract bees, it’s got the sunflower seeds that animals will eat and spread around – everything about a sunflower is designed to make more sunflowers, and it’s a product of a billion years of various filters and natural selection and evolution. In a very microcosmic kind of way, I feel like that’s what the album ended up as. It’s its own sunflower, and we were just the filters that prevented it from becoming something else.
Coming to your senses
When you’re hoping your friend will come to their senses, obviously, they’re kind of being an idiot, and you hope that they’ll snap out of it. There’s some truth to that; as a band, we tend to get absorbed in all kinds of different issues and minor grievances and things like that, and you hope that the whole band will sort of come to our senses and be a band again. But in this case, I mean it more literally than metaphorically. When you’re first writing and recording, you’re listening to the sounds, and I just love this idea of coming to your senses, like being a little monkey in the world, and you really taste your food, you listen to the sounds around you, and you feel the textures of Earth, and you’re not living so much in your head and concept all the time, but you’re actually physically experiencing the world as directly as possible. Music is so great for that, because when you’re absorbed in music, it turns off your internal dialogue, and you’re not nattering away to yourself and chattering all the time. You can get really close to the present moment when you’re listening to music, and the closer you are to the present moment, the more joy there is to find.
In terms of the band, it’s how we start: We will listen and listen and listen, and then we’ll stop and we’ll talk about it. And then when it’s done, we’re still listening again, and this idea of just coming back to your ears, it’s like coming back to reality in a way. Every time you listen to it, it’s a little bit different. I feel like it’s convalescent to be in the moment and to come to your senses. The process of being a band is often all in your head – you think about touring, you think about your fans, you think about wanting to be successful, you think about all the logistics that have to happen, but all the time, we’re breaking that pattern and coming to our senses and listening to the sounds that we’re making. And that’s where the art really is, that’s where the art lives. It’s in the perception of the moment.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
