In an attempt to keep from losing their minds during the long dark night of 2020, Bob Deveau and Tim Walker chose to get a little weird or, perhaps, weirder. Bless their little hearts. Deveau, best known as the powerhouse drummer for The Olympic Symphonium, Grand Theft Bus, and Force Fields, has been working in his off hours on his own solo electronic music production as Senior Citizen, for which he seems to recruited fellow Grand Theft Bus bandmate, Tim Walker, and pushed well into unexplored territory.
“The Foreign,” the second single to be released from their upcoming album—the first being “Tell Me When It’s Safe,” released last month—expresses something like the bizarre impetus that drove Deveau and Walker to collaborate on this off-kilter, beat-forward project.
“I can’t remember exactly when it happened but, at some point, Bob said ‘Hey, are you writing these songs about MY life?’,” laughs Walker. “I wasn’t. Or at least not intentionally anyway. From that point on I decided to write specifically about Bob’s life. (No I didn’t.) But I didn’t not either. Or did I? Don’t fear change, embrace the unknown, take a chance, move on. I think that’s what I’m going on about here.”
And change is what we received. For fans of Grand Theft Bus, this is out in left field, but for anyone familiar with Deveau’s debut Senior Citizen project, The Hawk (2016)—named for having recorded the album from his childhood home in Port Hawkesbury—it’s a lot closer to home. Despite a quiet five years since Senior Citizen’s last release, pandemics have a way of channelling energies into all kinds of unexpected projects and Deveau says that the second installment of his collaborative electronic music project was driven by one of the most unexpectedly creative surges of his life.
Apparently, Walker found himself in the same position, and when the two collapsed in exhaustion upon completion of their intensely collaborative creation, it was with the bemused proclamation that would become the album’s title: “What was that?”
Or so legend has it.
Senior Citizen and Tim Walker’s upcoming album, What Was That, is set to be released on December 3, 2021 via Backward Music.
The album is currently available for digital pre-order.