Zeus revisits the Say Us archives on Lost & Found, out Oct. 9

Toronto band Zeus is releasing Lost & Found (The Say Us Archives) on Oct. 9 through Arts & Crafts.

Photo credit: Supplied

Toronto band Zeus is returning to the recordings that surrounded its first album for Lost & Found (The Say Us Archives), a 13-track collection arriving Oct 9, 2026 through Arts & Crafts. The label and the band’s publicist describe it as Zeus’s fifth studio album, and the release draws from material created during the period when the musicians who would become Zeus were still moving between other projects and figuring out how they worked together.

The current lineup is Neil Quin, Mike O’Brien, Carlin Nicholson and Rob Drake. In the period before Say Us arrived in 2010, O’Brien was taking a break from Paso Mino, where he had played with Afie Jurvanen, Nicholson was taking a break from The 68s, and Quin had stepped back from touring with The Golden Dogs. According to the band’s release materials, they began jamming, sharing songs and recording ideas, with other musical friends sometimes joining them.

A record of how Zeus came together

Mike O’Brien describes Lost & Found as filling in gaps in the story of Zeus’s beginnings. The archive reaches back to a stage when separate songwriting projects were starting to overlap and the group that would become Zeus was taking form around those sessions.

Some of that material ended up outside the finished version of Say Us. When the band returned to the recordings for Lost & Found, some were already complete while others needed additional work. The result is an archival album made from recordings at several stages of completion.

That distinction is clearest on “Kindergarten.” Lost & Found includes Neil Quin’s demo of the song, while “Kindergarten” also appeared on Say Us. The new album therefore combines material that remained in the archive with an earlier version of at least one song listeners may already know.

The first track released ahead of the album is “Lions Pride.” It sits second on the 13-song track list, between “John & Daryl” and “More Than Friends.”

Arts & Crafts, the Toronto label that released Say Us in 2010, is also releasing Lost & Found. Sixteen years later, the new album returns to the same period from a different angle, using the recordings that sat around the debut to document more of the band’s early working life.

Lost & Found track list

1. John & Daryl

2. Lions Pride

3. More Than Friends

4. Kindergarten (demo)

5. Have A Little Faith

6. Don’t Block The Sun From Your Eyes

7. Light Get Through

8. Mother, Mother

9. Saturday In The Cold Sun

10. Fight You’ll Find

11. Hurts Me To Know

12. Please Don’t Go

13. Super Supa Supupu Coin Coing!

For listeners coming to Zeus now, Lost & Found starts close to the beginning. Its source material comes from the period when musicians from several Toronto projects were trading songs and recording together before Say Us became Zeus’s debut album. The recordings that remained outside that debut are now being collected as an album in their own right.

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