Ontario’s Asthma Kids release new EP, The Meek Are Getting Ready
Ontario genre-agnostic duo Asthma Kids are turning music into a rallying cry. With their newly released EP The Meek Are Getting Ready, the Lindsay-based band sharpen their blend of punk urgency, dark humour, and unfiltered social critique, confronting wealth inequality and power imbalance head-on, without sacrificing groove or grit. Anchored by the explosive single “Crumbs and Morsels (The Meek Are Getting Ready Pt IV),” recorded in a single afternoon and mastered at Abbey Road, the project arrives alongside a raw, dystopian video that amplifies its call for unity and resistance. We caught up with Asthma Kids frontman Trevor Hutchinson to talk revolution, genre-atheism, fast-and-furious recording sessions, and why the uprising should still make you dance.
“Crumbs and Morsels (…Pt IV)” is one of your most urgent, politically charged songs to date. What sparked the idea for this particular critique of wealth inequality, and why did it feel important to release it now?
I really appreciate you noticing the urgency – that’s what I was feeling. It is in the uber-elites’ interest to have us fighting each other. To blame an immigrant instead of blaming widening income inequality for a social problem. They have built a media monopoly whereby these disagreements are created, perpetuated, and inflamed by algorithms. We are fighting each other for the crumbs of our economy and morsels of dignity as the uber-elite laugh and enjoy their spoils.
The track was recorded in just three hours at The Reverie Recording Studio and mastered at Abbey Road. How did that fast, almost guerrilla-style recording process shape the tone and energy of the final track?
We are always pushing our recording methodology. For another track on the EP, I went into the studio having never sung or hummed the vocal out loud. I wanted to test how close the sound in my head was to reality. For this track, the lyrics were completed while the bass and guitars were going down. It’s our way of making it both a little crazy and a real sense of urgency, considering the meter is running.
You’ve described yourselves as “genre-atheists.” How does that philosophy guide the sonic identity of the upcoming EP, The Meek Are Getting Ready, and where does “Crumbs and Morsels (…Pt IV)” fit within that larger narrative?
Chris LeFrancois, the owner of Lola – our Toronto home base for live shows – I think best describes our approach, ”Asthma Kids have never heard a genre of music that they won’t gleefully subvert, repurpose, enhance, destroy, and rebuild. They are adjacent to punk, freak folk, country, power pop, and rock and roll, but they’re something else altogether. The seemingly nice neighbours, living next door to musical convention… until they burn down all the houses on the street (sonically speaking – arson is bad).”“Crumbs” was the fourth and last song to be recorded. We had done a ‘rock and roll’ punk answer, then we veered into Hardcore for the second and third tracks. Switching gears, we wondered: what would an electro club beat sound like in one of our punk songs? With this one, and many others, we’re not quite sure how to label it. That’s not great for trying to market a song. But labels are for soup cans in our opinion.
The video with director Lisa Battocchio feels both cinematic and chaotic – masks, run-and-gun shots, downtown Toronto grit. What conversations did you have with her early on, and how did her visual interpretation deepen or shift your own understanding of the song?
Lisa, in her words, says she set out to make “a dystopian video shot on the streets of Downtown Toronto – raw, gritty, and as punk as the track itself. Run-and-gun cinematography, hand-crafted masks, and a small but fearless crew bring this chaotic vision to life.” When Lisa delivered the final cut, I thought, “Oh my god, that’s it.” I think she made it more urgent and pushing. She also made it scary. Because what’s happening in our society is scary.
This is your second collaboration with Battocchio, following “Die On This Hill (…Pt II).” What makes her such a natural creative partner for Asthma Kids, and what did you want to do differently this time around?
As you note, this was our second video working with Lisa. I loved the first video, so the process for “Crumbs” began with 100% trust between artists.
My basic approach for videos is to tell the director to make a short film with our song as the soundtrack. It’s hard enough for me to manage the sounds in my head, lol. So, I leave visuals to others.
Other than looking at three pictures on a mood board and saying “that looks amazing,” I had zero input into the video. No emails. No calls during the making of it.
Letting your art completely go into the hands of someone else is a trip for me. I do the same for mixing. I might have an additional idea. But my art is always better with someone else’s art.
The themes across the EP explore revolution, unity, and the fractures in modern society – heavy subject matter delivered with bite, humour, and fury. How do you strike the balance between social commentary and the instinct to keep things fun, danceable, and accessible?
We got pretty heavy, lyrically speaking, on this EP. So we had to have fun making it and hoping that some of that would come through. And for the most part, we kept it ‘toe-tappy’ (if that’s a word lol). We think the revolution will have lots of dancing.
Asthma Kids have always moved between alt-country, punk, power-pop, and even comedy. What can fans expect thematically and sonically from The Meek Are Getting Ready that they haven’t heard from you before?
As we are wont to do, we are a bit all over the place. We are super stoked about an international collaboration with the Irish/Welsh punk duo Craic Killers that comes out on Dammit Records’ Dam-Nations on January 1, 2025.
The EP had four songs that were The Meek Are Getting Ready, parts I, II, III, and IV. We have The Meek Are Getting Ready (Part I) ready. And it’s a slick, almost New Country song. Who knows, maybe socialist New Country can be a thing?
I don’t know when I got old, but there are now itty-bitty grandkids, so we have a kids music vinyl 45 coming out in June 2026. We just finished a rather sappy, sentimental ballad. We’ll manage to weird it up by the time it’s done, though!