Jason Collett
He won’t be part of next week’s Broken Social Scene tour, but a new solo album may yet bring the Toronto rocker to Japan

Pony Canyon

Jason Collett is known on this side of the Pacific for his participation in some of the emotive shows by Canadian rock band Broken Social Scene at Fuji Rock over the past few years. But the occasion for catching up with him by phone at his home in snowy Toronto is not that band’s tour next month—which he won’t be part of—but his third and latest solo album.

Released this week on boutique imprint Arts & Crafts (also home to BSS, Feist and Stars) and distributed in Japan by Pony Canyon, Here’s To Being Here is for Collett something of a departure. “The previous record had a revolving door of Broken Social Scene members,” he explains. “The new one is a far more focused affair, in that it’s the touring band that I’ve been playing with for the last few years.”

Listeners familiar with BSS will recognize an immediate difference between Here’s To Being Here and that band’s work, as well as with Collett’s previous solo outings. It’s an album that has less of a sense of reaching and experimentation, and more of a feeling of being comfortable in its clothes. The end result of the recording sessions done last winter with legendary producer Howie Beck is something that approaches the classic songwriting of artists like, say, Tom Petty.

Here’s To Being Here has a lazy, self-deprecating, understated feel, embellished with the merest hint of a harmonica here, a banjo there. Some songs take on failed relationships (“Out of Time,” “Not Over You”), while one was inspired by the abduction in Iraq of one of Collett’s friends (“Waiting For the World”). Yet another, “Charlyn, Angel of Kensington,” is a tribute to his wife’s aunt, whom it turns out saved a Toronto slum from demolition in the ’60s. The mood is unironic, reflective and grateful.

“I am quite happy with where I’m at in my life,” grants the father-of-three. “It’s pretty rich, and I have really close relationships.” The title, he explains, comes from a poem by jazz poet Paul Haines. “I think of it as a sweet simple toast to being in the moment, whatever that might be, and taking the opportunity to celebrate my life.

“We seem to have indulged ourselves in quite a bit of irony toward the end of the last century, and I’m happy to be rid of that,” he says. “I think there was some healthy exorcism going on by there being so much cultural irony around, but at a certain point you have to move on and embrace things in a hopeful and romantic way.”

Collett seconds the notion, expressed recently in these pages by American folk-rocker Sufjan Stevens, that there’s a new desire among listeners for meaningful music.

“I absolutely agree with it,” he says. “I think that’s partly why ’80s music became so popular in the last ten years—there’s a certain earnest, romantic quality to it that people took to. It was no coincidence that a band like Arcade Fire blew up when it did: because it’s so celebratory, there’s something powerful about it. And a band like the Stars [who perform with BSS next week] are very romantic, but then out of that perhaps has begun a search for something not just romantic but also of some more substance. I am reminded all the time of how ultimately important music is in people’s lives: it’s a reprieve from the muck of consumer culture that we’re constantly inundated with.”

Collett acknowledges that he’s missed out on a lot of Broken Social Scene’s recent evolution, but says that however things work out, its individual members will remain friends. “Whatever happens happens. There’s no static rule to how this works,” he explains. “Prior to the outside world taking notice of Toronto, we were in a cocoon of being anonymous, ignored by the outside world.

“That allowed a community of musicians to develop a sound, to make music that was not calculated to achieve any success but that was rewarding in and of itself. There’s a real joy to the kind of music that’s being played here. And then when things blew up there were very tight bonds that allowed things to continue internationally. I live in a family-like collective of artists: the Stars and other bands that evolved around Broken Social Scene. You know, I’ll have some input on the new Broken Social Scene record when it comes up. But who knows? The whole thing could go tits over ass tomorrow, so we don’t tend to worry about it.”

Here’s To Being Here is available on Pony Canyon. Broken Social Scene and Stars play Liquid Room, Mar 6 and Shibuya Club Quattro, Mar 7. See concert listings (popular) for details.

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