Never Shout Never‘s Christofer Drew says he’s found his “happy spot” with the group’s new album, “Indigo” — but it came after some trying times.
“I went through a crazy period,” Drew tells Billboard. “On our last record (2011’s) ‘Time Travel,’ I was heavy into drugs. Pretty much this album is me getting clean and me finding spirituality, getting into a lot of Eastern philosophies, finding compassion and happiness, just without myself and without substances. That’s kind of what this album is. It’s just me getting back to my original self. I feel like a kid again, kind of.”
Check out the exclusive premiere of new track “All Mine”:
Drew says the drug binge was the product of “self-worth problems,” some of which stemmed from being a major label recording artist as a teenager, and he decided to turn things around when he recognized he “was really pushing away people that I loved” — including bandmates Taylor MacFee and Hayden Kaiser. Drew, now 21, went through rehab and then to faith healers, working to get himself emotionally, spiritually and physically healthy.
“Life is just very good right now,” he says. “I feel very cleansed. I don’t regret anything I’ve done; some of the chemicals I put in my body opened my mind to a whole different way of thinking about things. So I’m glad I know that side of the story, but I don’t want that to be my existence or what I’m remembered for.”
Drew, MacFee and Kaiser recorded “Indigo” in Springfield, Mo., and while some of its 11 songs acknowledge the transgressions of the past (“Sorry”) most reflect the upturn in Drew’s life since coming clean. “I feel like without music I really don’t have any purpose in this life,” he says. “(‘Indigo’) is kind of me rediscovering that drive to make music that makes people feel good.”
“All Mine,” meanwhile, is a piano and beatbox-driven track is one of the tracks Drew wrote early on. “I was talking to this girl who I wanted really bad, but she was with someone else,” he recalls. “It’s about em hanging out with her one night and we stayed up all night but she wouldn’t kiss me ’cause she was with somebody else. So in the song I’m telling her I wasn’t going to stop ’til she was mine — all mine, y’know. It’s definitely one of the most heartfelt on the album because I was really feeling a lot of emotion at the time.”
“Indigo” is due out Nov. 13, and Never Shout Never is planning some heavy road work to support it. The group will be in South America for the first two weeks of November before kicking off a U.S. tour on Nov. 20 in Des Moines. Drew says the group does plan to take January and February off to work on more new material — “We’re going to try to do a whole other record in that time,” he notes — before heading around the rest of world.
Drew is also planning to release an acoustic-flavored solo set called “The Light EP,” which he’s planning to distribute for free via the Internet.