Andrew Spice Fights to Feel Again on Comeback Album, With Animals, Spotlighting Defiant New Single “Junk”
After a 20-year hiatus, Andrew Spice returns with With Animals, a powerful reclamation of identity and emotion from the depths of trauma and detachment. Anchoring the record is “Junk,” a raw, defiant indie anthem that takes aim at the emotional erasure caused by psychiatric medication and the quiet rage of wanting to feel again.
Produced by two-time JUNO nominee Matthew Barber and featuring acclaimed musicians Mike Tompa, Marshall Bureau and Devon Henderson, With Animals is a deeply personal collection of songs about survival, self-reclamation, and the radical strength of vulnerability. Piano-driven and poetically potent, the album traverses themes of sexual violence, emotional isolation, queerness, and the healing power of animals. Its most biting track, “Junk,” turns gut-wrenching experience into something electric and alive.
“During the difficult time when I wrote these songs, I sought help through psychiatric meds,” Spice says. “‘Junk’ is about realizing that they were erasing more than just the pain, and the fight to feel like myself again.”
While “Junk” channels the record’s fury, With Animals moves dynamically between emotive piano ballads (“Gentle Sentinel”), anthemic resilience (“Rage Stage”), and experimental indie flourishes all anchored by Spice’s singular voice and lyricism. The project was born during a time of profound upheaval. Having left the music world behind to become a psychologist, Spice found himself creatively reawakened by personal crisis, returning to songwriting as a means of survival.
“What I didn’t expect was that this music would become my way back to life,” he says. “For anyone who feels that there is no room for them in the world, I hope that these songs are a message that you are allowed to exist.”