We had a chat with Drew Thomson from Single Mothers about how the new record, 'Our Pleasure', has evolved in line with the development and ethos of the band.
Three years on from 2014’s debut record ‘Negative Qualities’, Thomson has taken quite the long winding road to releasing Single Mothers’ sophomore album. But that has always been his way. When it was revealed Thomson had quit the band to mine for gold prior to ‘Negative Qualities’, some people were left scratching their heads, but what you need to understand is that Single Mothers are nothing if not unconventional.
As Thomson credits the band for growing a soul of its own, it’s less than surprising that the sound has evolved from the EPs through to this record.
“Single Mothers is the only thing that I’ve done this long – and not because I haven’t tried to end it, but because it’s gone on to be it’s own entity. I’ve quit, and the band has gone on without me.”
“I’m not in the ‘Christian Girls’ video because I wasn’t in the band when that was shot, I quit to go gold prospecting up north. People drift in and out of the band but always leave their mark behind, a riff in a song that gets recorded, a dent in the van door – whatever, but something – and that collects into what Single Mothers has become.”
This notion of Single Mothers being an amalgamation of dents in doors and broken guitar strings is a gloriously poetic way to approach making music. It’s not about setting out to write something a specific way, it’s a collection of humans leaving their marks on a piece of wax.
‘Our Pleasure’ is smoother than ‘Negative Qualities’, it has less grit, but just as much emotion, the experience is just a little less abrasive. The new sound that comes through on Our Pleasure was just how they were feeling, a touch more mellow with age. “We’ve done a lot of living since ‘Negative Qualities’ so it was just a natural progression,” Thomson explains.
Having that knowledge of his own growth impacted his writing too, there is a beautifully self-aware track entitled ‘High Speed’ that preempts the feedback Thomson thinks this record will garner. “I knew right away that this album was going to be different than the last one, and I always thought it was funny how angry change, even the slightest, made some people – including myself. When I was a young kid I dropped plenty of bands for diverting from what I considered to be the best for them. In a way I’m kind of making fun of my younger self. In another way, I’m not.”
The first track on ‘Our Pleasure’, ‘Undercover’ is just enough like ‘Negative Qualities’ to hook you in, but different enough to signal that there has been growth. That super-recognisable guitar tone is ever present, and a welcome reminder that this is a punk band with serious intentions.
If Thomson could offer this record up to the ears of any one human, who would it be? Why, Abe Cunningham of The Deftones, of course. Thomson says someone sent him a video of Abe a little while ago saying he liked ‘this band from Canada called Single Mothers’. “I’d like it if he would listen to this album and then take us on tour,” he says, and I think we’d all like that to be honest.
