Having found their new home with Vancouver-based label Mint Records, expat Prince-Edward-Islanders Kiwi Jr. got down to the business of settling in with a new album. And when we say business, we mean the real deal. No messing around. No phony bologna. They’re taking names and busting heads. There’s something rotten in the city of Toronto and Kiwi Jr. are out to settle a score. It all leads back to one person. Check out their new video for “Leslie.”
The details are hazy, the clues are an impossible paradox and it all plays out like a full season of Scooby-Doo, an Agatha Christie novel, and a dose of the Beastie Boys all jammed into as much time as it would take to run through a commercial break.
Who dropped out of college? Who disappeared last New Year? Are we still going out tonight? Behind each of these latex masks, the same person: Leslie.
But something didn’t add up. Who is this Leslie really and what lurks in the hearts of Kiwi Jr.? What drives them to perform in a rock and roll band by night while solving crimes, also by night? The answer: seditious literature!
“At the time were passing around a couple Patricia Highsmith novels, and I think I lent Brian [Murphy] American Tabloid by James Ellroy,” explains Jeremy Gaudet, “so we were kinda in that pulpy mystery head space and wanted to do something like that.”
A likely story – but when it came to release a single, Mint Records came back to them with an offer they couldn’t refuse. The band had a two-week deadline to deliver a video, or else.
“We watched a bunch of Godard and The Americans, came up with the shot list and did it all in basically a week. I think final cut was done at like an hour before it was supposed to be up,” says Gaudet.
Despite this, Gallant admits that he owns no moustaches of his own, while several moustaches can clearly be seen appearing in the video.
“We bought two packs online that had, like, eight different styles: ‘the gambler,’ ‘the thief,’ etc. I don’t own any,” admits Gaudet. “You know that the main actor in the video had a real mustache? That gets lost sometimes when you see all the fake ones.”
Fake moustaches, the dissemination of propaganda and false identities aren’t the only things Kiwi Jr.’s tool chest. The band was nearly brazen enough to deploy contraband Leslies.
“We were going to use a bunch of famous Leslies in the video but got nervous that somebody might clampdown if somehow they saw it. We did sneak in a Leslie Neilson photo though.”
You might question their methods, but they get the job done. Kiwi Jr.’s first full-length album, Football Money, will be available March 29, 2019 via Mint Records.