"This is a message for Charlie, so can you please save it? Thank you." That's how Kevin Drew, frontman for Toronto indie rock super collective Broken Social Scene, opened what would become K.C. Accidental's very first recording, an answering machine sketch-turned-jam that he and longtime bandmate Charles Spearin slyly called "Kev's Message For Charlie". That was back in 1996. Drew began to play a very simple, one-finger keyboard melody, and Spearin added additional instrumentation. A bass figure there, a few liquid guitar chords here, a bit of brushed snare drum, and wham-- a song was born in such an unexpected, accidental way that it prompted Drew and Spearin to continue recording together. The whole thing lasts only two-and-half minutes, but it's magic: You can hear the bedrock of what would become Broken Social Scene as it began to form.
"Kev's Message For Charlie" was one part of K.C. Accidental's first album, Captured Anthems For an Empty Bathtub. That six-song, self-released record has been paired with the follow-up LP, Anthems For the Could've Bin Pills, and is being given a deluxe wide release via Drew's Arts & Crafts imprint. Empty Bathtub was recorded by Spearin and Drew in the latter's childhood bedroom over the course of five days. It's by far the moodier and less focused of the two efforts, though again, in the overdriven guitar charge of opener "Nancy and the Girdle Boy" or loose, funereal feel of "Save the Last Breath for Me", a great deal of early chemistry between Drew and Spearin can be heard on tape. That's not so much the case in the jazz strokes of "Something For Chicago" or trance-y "Anorexic He-Man", two other experiments that never really take hold or display much synergy.
For Could've Bin Pill, the two upgraded their studio setup and hunkered down in a friend's living room. Rather than play all the instruments themselves (save for the trumpet work of BSS's Jimmy Shaw), they added further layers from future BSS members Justin Peroff, Emily Haines, and Jason Collett. Haines actually provides vocals in a duet with Drew on "Them (Pop Song #3333)", his very first recording as a vocalist. The additions make for a more muscular unit, one whose expanse you can hear stretch and congeal nicely across every cut. As a whole, that approach provides a listenable, clear bridge to You Forgot It in People and onward. "Instrumental Died in the Bathtub and Took the Daydreams With It" builds naturally and beautifully, its guitar and violin parts constantly on the climb. And "Silverfish Eyelashes" swaps those guitars for washed-out synths, daisy chaining them with sad-eyed string flourishes to elegant, pre-Postal Service effect. Though the improvisational feel is still present here throughout, the focus that galvanizes every second more or less belies the original, "accidental" nature from which they took their name. Full-bodied, completely immersive songs like the gauzy "Ruined in 84" don't so much capture an impromptu experiment as they capture a band at work.
