Junior Boys Announce New Album 'Waiting Game,' Share "Night Walk"

Colin Fisher and Bonjay's Alanna Stuart contribute to the duo's latest

BY Calum SlingerlandPublished Aug 23, 2022

Following last month's news of their 2023 North American tour, Junior Boys have detailed their sixth studio LP. The duo of Jeremy Greenspan and Matt Didemus will share new album Waiting Game on October 28 via City Slang.

Arriving six years on from 2016's Big Black Coat, the nine-song Waiting Game is said to find Junior Boys "in a tender and contemplative mood" compared to their more melodic, danceable releases — a frame of mind informed both by the earlygoing of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Greenspan's walks through Hamilton's lake and waterfront trails with the music of older heroes in his ears: Kraftwerk's Florian Schneider, Jon Hassell, McCoy Tyner, John Martyn and Sly Stone.

Per a release, the quieted world and those aforementioned musical selections led Greenspan to consider how contemporary popular music continues to prioritize volume over depth and detail. "A weird fact of the perception of sound is that you hear more accurately at lower levels of volume," he shares, adding how he came to think, "'What if I created an immersive environment ... by recording huge amounts of material but layering it imperceptibly into as quiet a place as I can?'"

The end result is what Greenspan has named "peripheral music," concluding of the album, "Waiting Game is intended to give the listener some respite. I like the idea of people putting it on a home and exhaling in relief, even if that relief is tinged with some sadness." Joining Greenspan and Didemus are multi-instrumentalist Colin Fisher on saxophone, and Bonjay vocalist Alanna Stuart.

New song "Night Walk" arrives alongside today's news, and you can hear it below alongside a video edited by Mike Jerome, which uses footage from the TV show Night Walk captured in and around Toronto's Yorkdale subway station in 1986.

As Greenspan explains, "Night Walk" imagines a missing person who has no desire to be found. "They are being searched for by day, and can only go out at night. The daytime itself is an invasion of privacy and the night city is a camouflage."

As previously reported, Junior Boys will tour North America in early 2023 on their first headlining trek of the continent in seven years, performing songs from all five of their albums and other rarities with help from an expanded touring band.

Waiting Game is now available for pre-order.


Waiting Game:

1. Must Be All the Wrong Things
2. Night Walk
3. It Never Occured to Me
4. Thinking About You Calls Me
5. Yes 2
6. Dum Audio
7. Fidget
8. Samba on Samba
9. Waiting Game

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