Today, January 17, sees the world-wide release of Football Money, the debut album from Toronto's Kiwi Jr. The album is out via Persona Non Grata Records and follows the March 2019 Canadian release on Mint Records.
A virtual explosion of power-pop, and infectious and ear-wormy from start to finish, the LP was engineered by Aaron Goldstein, and mixed by Holy f's Graham Walsh.
All natives of Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Kiwi Jr. are now based in Toronto and much of their songwriting-- which has been compared to both Pavement and Weezer -- is informed by the city that surrounds them. They have spent the last 5 years honing their craft both in the studio and live, including opening spots with Wolf Parade, New Pornographers and Alvvays.
Football Money was recreated at high volume on stages across Canada; a dispatch stitched out of fragments, a lustrous twelve-string paint-job unraveling ten booksmart tracks in under thirty minutes. A product of two years of labor, a monument to work-life balance, the record is not unattractively scarred by its circumstance: recorded by nightfall in dormant studios, friends and enemies drafted as backup singers and engineers, the LP untidily fuses the yin of work with the yang of life, chronicling a dual-existence, unkempt instrumentalists moonlighting as undercompensated administrators by the harsh fluorescent light of day, borne back ceaselessly into the Greater Toronto Area by night.
Kiwi Jr,: Rickenbackers detuned to the frequency of a blue-screen migraine, equal parts jangle and punk - a modern day Modern Lovers with the Kinks cc'd.
Jan 11 - Toronto, ON - Gladstone Hotel (Long Winter Fest)
Jan 29 - London, UK - The Waiting Room
Jan 30 - Bristol, UK - Old England
Jan 31 - Leeds, UK - Hyde Park Book Club
Feb 1 - Manchester, UK - Gullivers
Feb 22 - Ottawa, ON - Live on Elgin
Feb 29 - Montreal, QC - Casa Del Popolo
Mar 12-14 - New York, NY - New Colossus Festival
March 16-21 - Austin, TX - SXSW
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