Downie Street Collective just weren’t made for these times in their new single The Analog Man — showcasing today on Tinnitist.
Technological Luddism is hardly a new thing among musical purists. But Downie Street Collective are so convincing about it that you might be tempted to chuck your smartphone into the river. On their new single, the band take a hard look at the human experience in the age of digital overload. The song, they explain, is meant to decry “the growing dissonance between our innate need for physical, human connection and the increasingly virtual world we inhabit.”
“What is lost when we trade touch for taps, skin for swipes?” they wonder. The answer, as the song’s probing lyric reveals, includes but is not limited to “Polaroids, an old paper map,” “a 45 I’m dying to spin,” and a bunch of other relics of a simpler time that our traditionalist narrator isn’t ready to let go of. Reaching out to the one he loves across the computerized threshold he abhors — but which he’s almost been forced to acknowledge as a necessary evil — he implores her to:
“Send a hug with a digital kiss
The screen reminds of what I’m going to miss
I’m a romantic, I’m an Analog Man…
Lay with your heart in mine as we sleep
Laughing in your arms, entwined at the feet
So fantastic being an Analog Man
Some kind of magic being an Analog Man.”
Not surprisingly, the song was written during the darkest days of Covid lockdowns, when bandmembers had to resort to desperate measures like driving 45 minutes just to sit on a girlfriend’s patio and talk on the phone from opposite sides of a sliding glass door. Or, more ominously, meet at a church graveyard at night to talk through heavy masks from 10 feet apart.
When it comes to musical exuberance, though, Analog Man is anything but a wake. It’s a jaunty, invigorating cut that lives up to the band’s extensive list of stated influences: Barenaked Ladies, 54•40, Sloan, Northern Pikes, The Pursuit of Happiness… oh, and Big Sugar, I Mother Earth, The Tragically Hip and Grapes of Wrath. Appropriate to its subject matter, the song nails the group’s overweening artistic goal of sounding “nostalgic yet fresh,” with a reverb heavy sound and an angular, anxious rhythm that would have been right at home on an episode of Hullabaloo. You could totally do the Swim to it.
Recorded at Westmorland Studio in Hamilton, the track benefited from the production of Carl Jennings, whose hands-on approach was just right for the tactile, organic, very human ethos they were all pushing. “He’s got this great way of hearing you play and then saying, ‘I think what you mean is this…,’ and either vocalizing or playing your intended idea,” the group say. “That way of working really helped us shape the sound.”
Analog Man is a new high-water mark In Downie Street Collective’s ongoing agenda of blending introspective lyricism, emotive vocals, intricate guitar riffs and compelling beats. Not coincidentally, those are the same qualities that have made the group a popular presence in their home of Stratford and beyond, with audiences falling under the spell of their ability to share genuine, resonant emotions. Each new show wins a flock of fresh converts to the gospel of authenticity laid down by the group’s lineup of Andy Allen (rhythm guitar and keyboards), Scott Beaudin (lead vocals and keyboards), Peter Dixon (bass), Mark Ippersiel (drums) and Eric Lundgren (lead guitar).
And every time that happens, it’s a victory for the philosophy that Analog Man — and the group itself — are all about. “We as a society seem to rely more now on the digital fix than the analog touch or presence,” the band say. “To us, there is nothing that can compare. Or compete.”
Check out The Analog Man above, hear more from Downie Street Collective below, and join them on their website, Facebook and Instagram.
