“Was that a year or a decade?” sings vocalist Michael MacNeil on “The Void,” the opening track from Contrived’s latest offering, entitled Addicted to Sadness. It’s a question as vague as it is specific, dependent of course on its application. Whether the answer lies in reference to Covid-19’s time-altering elasticity, or the very real gaps between the band’s studio releases, one thing is for certain: time and space have their benefits.

Contrived is a five-piece rock band from Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Comprised of Michael Bigelow, Loel Campbell, Tim D’Eon, Michael MacNeil, and Jon Samuel, the members have collaborated in a variety of diverse projects such as Wintersleep, Holy Fuck, Billy Talent, and Matt Mays, as well as successful solo endeavors and audio production with numerous acts of note. Contrived was born in 2000. This is their first new music since 2008’s Blank Blank Blank.

The process of writing the material that is to be found on Addicted to Sadness started by way of no process at all. That is, in December of 2021, the band decidedly got together to rehearse for three shows, in a dance hall overlooking the once-summer home of writer Elizabeth Bishop, in Great Village, Nova Scotia. As had become quite normalized, another lockdown loomed, and all but one show was again tossed into the all-too-familiar social ether. With nothing but time, and previously unbeknownst to them, a bubble, they did what they always did: started fervently excavating musical ideas. Suddenly, in giving space for all members to communicate their ideas, something resembling a skeleton of a record took form.

All relationships require diligent nurturing, a nurturing from which the musical variety is not exempt. To happen upon a group of people through which ideas flourish is a rare bird, something the five members of Contrived are acutely aware of. Also, to work in the relative unknown is a gift. Without peripheral expectation from labels, industry, or fans, the band could write and record at its own pace, not bending to current trends or fashionable culture. This is especially evident in the album’s lyricism, from Loel Campbell’s almost jovial ‘I don’t trust the government’, from ‘Half of It’, to Jon Samuel’s blatant ‘crackpot/conspiracy/oh dying industry’, from ‘Flash Forward.’ 

The 11 songs that comprise Addicted to Sadness are the result of collaboration in its purest form. They are an exercise in deconstructing the singular ego in an effort to serve the greater collective idea, which always exists beyond the constructs of our individual wanting. With production and mixing executed by Loel Campbell and mastering completed by Noah Mintz, this is Contrived in 2024.