Toronto’s Rock-Revivalists Original Pairs Warn Us About The Dangers Of Aging Out On “Not Grow Old”
When you hear a band has penned a concept album about the natural flow of a grand love affair, your instinctive reaction might be “Aww, how sweet.” Now meet Original Pairs. The Toronto rock-revival outfit has chosen to herald the arrival of their new collection, Long Play (OPLP), by releasing “Not Grow Old,” a relationship inventory with a—shall we say—quirkier bent.
Lyrically, the song finds a smitten narrator rattling off a series of things his woman could do that he promises wouldn’t scuttle their union—from staying out all night to putting him on hold to talking with her mouth full. But the loping, dark-rockabilly menace of the music hints that there’s going to be a crucial exception:
Don’t say you ain’t been told
You better not grow old
You better not grow old
Alllll righty then. This isn’t “I Will Always Love You”; it’s more like the answer to “When I’m Sixty-Four” McCartney was always dreading.
The song is the stealth-bomb Valentine of OPLP, which traces the evolution of a partnership from its earliest days in a Toronto apartment (“Concord Avenue”) to its inevitable rough spots (“Love Collision”) to the panicky prospect of living out the sunset years together (yep, that selfsame and troublesome “Not Grow Old”).
“The ‘Long Play’ of love isn’t always pretty, but it’s never boring,” the group understates.
And this bunch should know. When they met nearly two decades ago, the group’s Andrew Frontini and Lisa Logan decided to be not just a singer/guitarist and his drummer but a committed couple as well. Lest you assume, though, that OPLP represents some sort of twisted catharsis for the duo—well, they already mined that terrain on Original Pairs’ first album, Forbidden Fruit, whose romantic pop rock documented their “scandal-ridden” courtship.
The real scandal is the way Original Pairs has been setting the Toronto scene on its ear since 2008 with their electrifying brand of rock ’n roll, which incorporates elements of folk, country, pop, and psychedelia. Over the years, they’ve settled into a winning lineup of Frontini, Logan, bassist Lynda Kraar, and keyboardist Jon Loewen—the perfect vessel for the off-kilter yet accessible songs that flow from Frontini’s pen.
For this third album, the band chose to replicate its in-concert sound by recording “live off the floor” at Lincoln County Social Club, laying down all eight tracks in a frenzied four days. The aim was to recapture the feel of the early-’80s rock scene in Frontini’s native Kingston, Ontario, where he played in a band with Gord Downie, later of The Tragically Hip. It was a time, Original Pairs recalls when the revival of ’60s rock and rockabilly was dovetailing with the development of punk into new wave and postpunk. OPLP attempts to ape that synthesis by harkening simultaneously back to what the group pronounces “rock’s greatest years” of 1965 and 1980.
You can absolutely hear it on “Not Grow Old,” an endearingly retro number that sounds like the mutant cousin of a theme song a surf-garage band would have written for a TV spy show. Webb Wilder cultists will be in twang-guitar heaven. So the question has to be asked: Is the real love affair here the one between the star-crossed paramours on the album? Or is it with rock itself?
Take your time answering. As long as you’re thinking about it, you truly haven’t gotten old.
Care to introduce yourself?
Hi, I’m Andrew Frontini, lead singer, guitarist, and principal songwriter for Original Pairs. Beside me, adding editorial oversight as I write this, is co-founder and drummer Lisa Logan. We also have keyboardist Jon Loewen, who is busy mopping up after his rug rats, and Lynda Kraar on bass who is currently in New York schlepping her grandkid around. That’s right, we are an intergenerational four-piece rock band, who, while all enjoying various degrees of separation from youth’s first flush, are united in the commitment that we will “Not Grow Old”! OP is a Toronto-based rock’n’roll group that in some form or other has been gigging and recording since 2008 ( yikes!), with Lisa and Andrew as the core. The current, and best-ever lineup has been playing together since our last album “Natural State” came out in the spring of 2022. We are music listeners and lovers and channel rock’s rich back story through our original compositions. You’ll hear the garage riffs of the mid-sixties, the occasional incursion into psych-laced jamming, the high-octane pop of early 80s new wave, and every now and then the dark side of the country genre that creeps in.
Tell us about the process of recording “Not Grow Old”?
OP had been gigging steadily around Toronto and environs to support our last record Natural State ( 2022) with our current four-piece rock’n roll combo – vocals, guitar, keys, bass, and drums. We realized that we were really meshing and decided to start introducing new tunes into our set show by show until we had an album’s worth of new material ready to lay down. We went into John Dinsmore’s Lincoln County Social Club on Davenport Ave in Toronto with the intent of doing ten tracks live off the floor. John has a great space and he is super chill and very experienced at reading what a band needs to get comfortable in the studio. Our current single “Not Grow Old” is actually a tune that we’ve been playing live for a decade. We were super confident that we could just knock this one off in one take. But, as we all know, playing live to a bunch of dancing drunk people and capturing that same energy in the studio are two very different things. John had us all set up in one cozy room, with the bass and keys going directly into the board and my guitar going downstairs to my amp in an isolation booth. We were all wearing headphones, but otherwise, it was just like jamming at home. We opted to play without a click track so that we could keep an organic feel and let the tempo build as we liked. Play live together and feed off each other as the song plays out. Create a rock’n’roll feedback loop – that was the philosophy!
The challenge with that is you can’t cut and paste easily. The bed track has to be a perfect performance. John’s approach was to have us play the tune again and again until we started to flag. We kept saying “We know this song inside out, I’m sure we nailed it that time”. It was the end of the first day and I think l we’d done five takes and were going to move on, but our keyboardist Jon Loewen who is actually classically trained with grade 12 conservatory piano, and hence rather disciplined, insisted we do one more. Well wouldn’t you know it, that turned out to be the keeper. It had the drive and energy that you hear on the record and builds to a thundering climax. For the upcoming album we did one day of bed tracks followed by a day of very selective overdubs and came out with five finished tracks. We went back a month later and did the same thing to round out the collection. Very efficient, because we did the work upfront playing live. On “Not Grow Old” there are some little guitar rhythm chops that I added on day two to drive the tune along and the lead vocal which needed to be overdubbed tonight isolated it from the drums – the rest, even the blistering solo, is just as we laid it down live off the floor. We are really pleased with the recording because it has this very organic and authentic feel – gritty, sweaty, heavy, rock ‘n ‘roll!
What’s it like being an artist in Toronto, ON?
On the one hand, it’s exciting because there is a lot going on, particularly musically. There is live music to be seen all over the city seven days a week and so much of it is so good that it can be a bit overwhelming. It’s an incredibly diverse city and that’s reflected in the music and the audiences. The downside is that there is so much out there that you might wonder if your little contribution stands a chance or if it’s worth making. Fortunately, we’ve been at this for so long that we got over that a long time ago. Another negative of being an artist in Toronto is the cost of living and the fact that for live music, many artists aren’t compensated adequately. When you combine these factors, it makes it really rough for younger artists to emerge and for seasoned artists to sustain their growth.
Who was the first and most recent Canadian artist to blow you away?
We used to really dig the Rheostatics and in particular Martin Tielli (he was brilliant). I’m not talking about the stuff that eventually made it onto the radio like “Clair” but the really orchestrated art rock that you find on their albums “Whale Music “ and “Melville”. Martin Tielli had a couple of amazing solo projects “Nick Buzz” and Operation Infinite Joy which were really beautiful avant-garde explorations of where rock music could go. Seeing this stuff live in the late eighties and early nineties was amazing.
Today, a newer band that I think is incredible is Corridor out of Montreal. Their album “Junior” is a rock masterpiece from beginning to end!
I saw them at the Garrison in Toronto in January of 2022 and they were so tight, energetic, and heavy. Great harmonies ( all in French ), chiming guitars, and the punchiest melodic bass lines since the Beatles White Album. Plus they jump around like crazy and wear overalls.
You’ve been making music for a bit of time now, what’s one piece of advice you can offer to those starting out?
My advice is to lead with the writing, create great songs, and then keep playing them live any way you can. A band can be hard to keep together over time, so you have to be flexible. Lisa and I started OP as a duo, we worked as a trio for years and now we have this great quartette. When we can’t get the band together I play solo at places like the Free Times Cafe or the Communist’s Daughter. The point is that songs are always being created and, if they are good they can adapt to any format. Gigging lets you know how your music affects people. Forget about perfection, and get out there. Write, gig, record, repeat.