Single Mothers
Everything You Need
Dine Alone Records
Friday, October 28, 2022
Single Mothers broke up in 2009 and have been playing shows ever since. That’s been the bio of the band for the last 13 years. Single Mothers started when lyricist Drew Thomson quit his job at ReMax in 2008, walked into a bar in London, Ontario and recruited a random table of musicians. They’ve broken up since, a few times, but keep putting albums out and they keep playing shows. “Single Mothers isn’t anyone’s band to break up anymore, really,” says founder Drew Thomson. “There have been so many members over the years, I’ve even quit and it kept going without me.”
The vision for the Single Mothers had been designed intentionally to survive without Thomson if it had to. Enamoured by fellow Canadian’s Broken Social Scene and their loose structure, Thomson thought he could lean on that aspect and have a band with no real members at all, just people in and out whenever they wanted. “I used to think it was my experiment, but I don’t feel like it’s just mine anymore. If I quit, someone else could pick it up and keep going. It’s happened before and maybe it will happen again.”
Thomson left the band in 2010 to start gold prospecting in Kirkland Lake, ON. Single Mothers went on without him. Eventually, he came back for a few shows and they opened for Touche Amore. Jeremy Bolm offered to put out their first real release under his new label Secret Voice. After that things started taking off quickly. Single Mothers began a rigorous touring schedule, especially for a band that wasn’t supposed to be a band, and for a few years, the lineup more or less settled. International tours with Title Fight, The Bronx, Quicksand, Touche Amore, Enter Shakari, Off With Their Heads, Cancer Bats and many more and festivals such as Pitchfork Fest, Redding & Leeds, 2000 Trees, Primavera Music Festival, Halifax Pop, SCENE Fest, Riot Fest, SXSW, Pukklepop, Festival d'été de Québec, Pouzza Fest, Rifflandia, Sound And Fury among others kept Single Mothers busy.
Positive press started rolling in from Pitchfork highlighting Thomson’s penchant for lyricism “Thomson's lyrics are at once Single Mothers' main attraction and—for some listeners—their presumptive sticking point.”. Brooklyn Vegan, Exclaim!, NME and others have praised the band's live show as not to be missed.
Their new album ‘Everything You Need’ was written before covid hit in 2019 and relies on Thomson as the primary songwriter for the first time. As far as abandoning the notion of a band with no members, he says “There just isn’t the type of time we used to have. When you’re young the currency of evenings and weekends has a different weight to it. 14 years later, now - if I were to quit my job, walk into a bar and start a band - it would look like a midlife crisis. My friends are busy, they have lives and kids now. So I decided to write this myself.” Everything You Need is definitely a different sounding record from the last 3, but no record Single Mothers has ever released has sounded like the previous one. Each release has had a different line-up and this is no different. 6 years into sobriety has also given Thomson a new and evolving take on a band that started in a bar. Sobriety has influenced the band's sound and his writing. ’Everything You Need’ relies more on Thomson’s own personal influences, The Nerves, Talking Heads, Lifter Puller and even Taylor Swift.
The title Everything You Need comes from a convenience store Thomson walked past almost every day during the pandemic. He was drawn to the poetic moment he thought it represented. “Everything you need,” He say’s, “Is just such a beautiful name for a place that sells lottery tickets and cigarettes and coke zero and Oh Henry’s.” The store is now gone, closed and the sign isn’t there but listening to this new record, over all that the world has gone through in the last few years, made him think about how “Everything You Need” can sometimes be anything at all.