Since its release on Canadian indie rock music collective Broken Social Scene's critically acclaimed second album You Forgot It in People (2002), "Lover's Spit" has been covered by Feist and been featured in various films and TV series: Clément Virgo's Lie with Me (2005), Paul McGuigan's Wicker Park (2004), Bruce McDonald's The Love Crimes of Gillian Guess (2004), Showtime's Queer as Folk (2003) and Canadian mini-series Terminal City (2005). Kiwi teenage sensation Lorde also referenced it in "Ribs", a song from her debut album Pure Heroine (2013): 'The drink you spilt all over me/ "Lover's Spit" left on repeat'.
When read on a page, the lyrics to "Lover's Spit" comes across like a harsh and cynical critique about the perilous state of modern intimacy in an overly-permissive and sex-saturated culture:
'They sit around and clean their face with itAnd they listen to teeth to learn how to quitTied to a night they never metYou know it's time that we grow old and do some shitI like it all that wayI like it all that way
All these people drinking lover's spitSwallowing words while giving headThey listen to teeth to learn how to quitTake some hands and get used to it
All those people drinking lover's spitThey sit around and clean their face with itYou know it's time that we grow old and do some shitI like it all that wayI like it all that wayI like it all that way'
Lyrics:
But singer-songwriter Kevin Drew's tender and confessional vocal delivery keeps pace with a backdrop of atmospheric slow-tempo ambient indie rock, fleshing out a deep longing for the genuine human connection that might be absent despite all this generous sharing of bodily fluids. The mood is elebratory in the most tentative of ways, sustaining a hope for genuine intimacy while confessing fears that it may never be achieved.
This compelling contrast helped cemented the song's status as a classic indie rock ballad, as did Drew's perennial personal interest in the questions of love, sex and intimacy in the modern age:
"I think ‘Love vs. Porn’ was the most raw thing I ever wrote, where I’m basically admitting that I lost it. That I got lost and I couldn’t find the connection anymore. I worry that I sound like an older Christian as I do these things, but I just think—I find there’s an intimacy that’s just missing. I don’t promote it by experience so much as I take a look around and I watch and I look and I observe and I see and I look at the accessibility to everything that has to do with the bedroom and I look at how I see people moving and shaking and I watch the rise and fall of people’s relationships and I see the weight that this action holds in this day and age and I just feel as if—it does terrify me.”
Kevin Drew,
In a lengthy 2014 interview with , Drew expressed some concerns that the path towards genuine intimacy may be harder for today's generation of kids - who now have to navigate nude selfies, revenge porn, hyper-sexualized role models, songs like Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines", dating apps, hookup culture and the 24/7 availability of free pornography on the internet. But there have always been fears of loneliness, of whizzing through life and dying without ever experiencing a genuine connection with another human being. The challenges may change with time, but the need for a reflexive optimism remains.
