This might be a good time to check in with Kiwi Jr., just to see if they’re okay. This year they’ve launched their own sub-Sub Pop imprint, the band’s own Kiwi Club, and announced their upcoming sophomore album alongside the release of a video for the album’s titular track, “Cooler Returns,” but 2020 has been a year for wearing on the gears. For anyone who is used to being on stage — crowds, dirt bikes, pyrotechnics and all — there’s an unnerving absence of everything, and it welcomes dust to collect among the gathering cobwebs.
Directed by Sean Egerton Foreman (who was also responsible for Kiwi Jr.’s video “Gimme More” earlier this year), the new video tries to compensate for everything 2020 lacks, through science and technology, but mostly gusto.
“No one is able to play live shows, so using the latest technology we have replicated the most accurate version possible of what Kiwi Jr. shows once looked like,” says Kiwi Jr.’s Jeremy Gaudet.
This is about as straightforward of a description of the song as you’re going to get. It’s delivered in a mile a minute screed in Kiwi Jr.’s habitual style of unfiltered spontaneous prose. Damn the chorus and just unburden yourself of everything 2020 has thrown at you. Heck, start tossing out callbacks to the 15the century if you’ve still got those stuck in your craw. For Kiwi Jr., it means putting it all together “like a thousand-piece puzzle…”
“Assembled in flow state through the first dull stretch of quarantine, sanitized singer shuffling to sanitized studio by streetcar, masked like it’s the kind of work where getting recognized means getting killed,” says the band in their official press release. “‘Cooler Returns’ materializes as a sprawling survey from the first few bites of the terrible twenties, an investigative exposé of recent history buried under the headlines and ancient kings buried under parking lots.”
That should give you a sense of the tone they’re aiming for here, and why not? This is a year for addressing past grievances. Break them out in whatever order you want.
Close to a year after the release of their debut album, Football Money, Kiwi Jr. returns with their new album Cooler Returns. The album is expected to be released on January 22 (2021 willing) worldwide through Sub Pop, with the exception of Canada through the band’s Kiwi Club imprint, and distributed via Fontana North. Canadian buyers in particular can look forward to a limited run of 200 white vinyl LPs available via Bandcamp.