Darlings

Kevin Drew's second solo album opens with a geyser of warm noise that seems sure to turn into one of the expansive indie-rock bliss-outs he's been sculpting for more than a decade as the leader of Toronto's Broken Social Scene. Instead, it breaks off to reveal a soft, swaying folkie invitation to "party all alone." Drew's songs still zone out, but the focus here is on a stripped-down luster somewhere between occasional bandmate Feist and the National. It's a good fit for an album about the vagaries of thirtysomething intimacy, and sometimes the not-so-vagaries: "Reach our hand down below our waist/And give thanks to all we taste," Drew sings on "It's Cool." He's the Barry White of hip Canada.