The Art of Longevity

I caught up with Kurt for the Art of Longevity at his home in the leafy, trail-threaded neighbourhood of Mount Airy ("there's like one coffee shop, one grocery store kind of thing"), where, if you're a local dad with a creative streak and a guilty conscience, you too might one day hand him something strange and wonderful. 
Philadelphia's Been Good To Me is Kurt’s tenth album, and it arrives draped in the city's 250th anniversary of independence, although Kurt would like you to know that the Philly references preceded any civic occasion. "I've really been calling out Philly the whole time," he says, without particular urgency. "I called myself Philly's constant hitmaker, you know, early on, so all signs were pointing to this for natural reasons."
The phrase natural reasons crops up around Kurt Vile the way it tends to around artists who have figured something out that they couldn't quite explain if you put them on the spot. His producer Rob Schnaff asked him early in the sessions: is this your Philly record? Kurt had already sung Philadelphia into three different songs by that point. 
Sometimes an album tells you what it is before you know it. 
The record was made in part, as increasingly his records are, at home. His home studio has become the full circle he didn't quite plan to draw but which now makes complete sense: back in his twenties he was recording DIY bedroom tapes; now he's in his forties doing essentially the same thing, except for a major label (Verve) and in high fidelity. The method hasn't changed but the context has - the proverbial “slacker” has become an all out star of considerable standing in the global indie rock scene. 
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There’s a point in every long music career where survival becomes more interesting than success. Not survival in the purely commercial sense. Not chart positions, algorithmic reach or streaming milestones. But survival of identity. Survival of friendship. Survival of purpose. The good stuff that can easily get buried away in the cut & thrust of a fickle business like music. 
That’s where Kevin Drew of Broken Social Scene finds himself now, nearly 25 years after the collective first emerged from Toronto’s indie underground and quietly became one of the defining musical communities of the 2000s.
Drew is thoughtful, funny, open & revealing; and utterly uninterested in rock mythology. There are no grand narratives about being an artist in the world of “rock & roll”. In fact, he actively rejects them.
“I can’t handle any more Daisy Jones & The Six bullshit. It’s all drugs, drugs, drugs. The road’s about constipation, man. It’s not about partying. It’s about how my metabolism works on the road but nobody wants to make that movie.”
The refusal to romanticise the cliché is central to Broken Social Scene’s longevity. And that’s just what we love about The Art of Longevity. In fact I’m going to call it “getting beyond the cliches of being an artist in the modern music business”. 
While many bands implode under the pressure of ego, success or repetition, Drew talks about music instead as community: messy, imperfect, emotional community.
“Our success is not of an individual. It's a group of people. We’re in this together. We’re still going. Some of us have more success than others. Some people have swimming pools, some of us are renting. We have great lives, we have great kids, we have success, because success is honesty”. 
That philosophy runs through Remember the Humans, the band’s first album in nine years. It’s a record shaped not by urgency or any loud “comeback” ambition, but by reflection. The album opens with a trio of mid-tempo songs, thereby breaking every rule there is in the modern biz. Except the three songs are just great, and set the listener up for a journey that ebbs & flows like all good albums do. 
A collective is a very different beast from a band. For the various rotating members of Broken Social Scene (some 20 I could count), life and careers intersect in a spaghetti junction of a band dynamic. Parents have died. Relationships have changed. Careers have diverged. Some members of the collective found “mainstream” success through projects like Feist, Metric and Stars. Others remained closer to the margins. 
“We’re not owed anything,” Drew says. “We already did the best we could. Our career peaked. We never made it into the mainstream. We never sold our catalog. We never signed the “big deal”. We never took the money, man. We stayed with the people.”
As social scene indeed, and one very much not literally broken, but working just as it should. 
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After seven years between records, The Twilight Sad have returned with It’s the Long Goodbye, an album forged through grief, survival and renewal. Was it all worth it? Well, listen for yourselves. And do keep in mind that the album ranks 4th so far on the Album of the Year 2026 best-of league. Not that we advocate music as a competition. Just saying, some albums are clearly worth the work. 
Speaking to David Freer on this episode of The Art of Longevity Podcast, vocalist James Graham and guitarist Andy MacFarlane reflect on the emotional weight behind the record, the realities of touring in modern music, and how the band have managed to stay creatively vital two decades into their career. And, not that they would ever mention it themselves, it’s a known fact that we are talking about Robert Smith’s favourite band. On the band’s Spotify profile is Robert’s testimony: “They are the best band playing the best songs – consistently brilliant, emotional, intense, inspiring, entertaining.” 
The Scottish band’s sixth album arrived after what Graham describes as an intensely difficult period, shaped by personal loss and the long emotional aftermath of caring for his mother through Alzheimer’s disease. Yet despite the darkness surrounding its themes, there is a sense of optimism running through both the music and the band themselves. It transpires this is their most uplifting and dare we say, accessible record to date. And it may well be their best (not that we advocate a band should always compete with itself). 
Now, who is going to argue with Robert Smith then, a?
What a fantastic band on a creative roll. Jump on and get your fxxks back. 
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The book of the podcast, Riding the Rollercoaster, is now available. 
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From his early days with proto-punk pop band Slik, through his tenure with ex-Sex Pistol Glen Matlock’s Rich Kids, the creation of Visage, and touring with Thin Lizzy, to his major league success with Ultravox, and then his pivotal musical role in Band Aid and Live Aid, Midge Ure was a constant and significant force in the evolving music scene of the late seventies and eighties. 2026 sees his first release of new material in twelve years, a double album entitled A Man Of Two Worlds. 
In this episode of The Art Of Longevity, Midge talks to Fenner Pearson about his long career in music, his bold decision to release an album of instrumental music as part of his new double-album, and his plans for taking it on tour with a full band. Along the way, they discuss changes to the music industry and technology over the last fifty years, and how his Mum made egg and chips for Phil Lynott the first time he and Midge met.
There is little doubt about it, Midge is a British music legend and modest to a fault. A typically understated and delightful chat. 
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The book of the podcast, Riding the Rollercoaster, is now available. 
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Ladytron have never followed a conventional path to longevity. That’s good, because there isn’t one. This band has worked through cycles - creative surges, enforced pauses, patches of momentum, a hiatus, and reinvention. The unglamorous realities of sustaining a working band across decades. Daniel Hunt has been through these cycles a few times and knows how to press reset. “Every record has its own story,” he says, adding, with understatement, that “every record has to involve someone having a breakdown.” 
Generally true, except not this time around. 
The Art of Longevity Season 13 is powered by Bang & Olufsen. 
The book of the podcast, Riding the Rollercoaster, is now available. 
Support the show
Get more related content at: https://www.songsommelier.com/