Single Mothers have shared “Enough For You,” a track lifted from the Friday, October 28 release of the band’s new album, Everything You Need. Following the album’s lead single “Baby Bird,” “Enough For You” is inspired by getting priced out of the neighborhood, moving from one overpriced and bloated area to another while just trying to fit in long enough to get comfortable.

“My mom and I moved around a lot when I was a kid, and every couple of years I’d have to start at a new school,” frontman Drew Thomson recalls. “That anxious feeling has carried itself into my adult life with real estate prices climbing higher than ever and rentals being bought up by mega-corporations trying to edge out whomever they can. I walk past these ‘Sold’ signs plowed into meticulously mowed lawns all over and I wonder, ‘if there’s enough hope for you in this city, will there be enough for me?’ And if I’m being honest, I don’t really want to know. But eventually, we will all find out.”

Relying on Thomson’s songwriting for the very first time in the band’s long and compelling history, Everything You Need is a set of songs written prior to the world shutting down in 2020. It is definitely a different sounding record from the last three, but no record Single Mothers has ever released has sounded like the previous one. Each release has had a different lineup and this is no different.

The title comes from a convenience store Thomson walked past almost every day during the pandemic, and he was drawn to the poetic moment he thought it represented. “Everything you need,” he says, “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. That along with his sobriety that has spanned six years informs the music found on this new showcase and the ever-evolving nature this band is built upon.

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 Thomson. “There have been so many members over the years, I’ve even quit and it kept going without me.”

The vision for Single Mothers had been designed intentionally to survive without Thomson if it had to. Enamored by fellow Canadians 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.

As far as abandoning the notion of a band with no members and releasing this new album, Thomson 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.”

Single Mothers
Everything You Need track
Track list

Enough For You
Nausea
O-Zone
Throw
Soak
Baby Bird
Things
Too Many Choices
Anytime Anything