Sub Pop Recording artist Kiwi Jr. will release their new LP Cooler Returns, on January 22nd. The band will release the album in Canada via Kiwi Club imprint. Ahead of the release, comes the official video for “Cooler Returns”, the album’s title track and new single, which was directed by Sean Egerton Foreman. Singer Jeremy Gaudet comments on the video: “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.”

Buildings burning in every direction; macabre unknowns in your friendly neighbour’s basement; undecided voters sharpening their pencils: under pressure we could call Kiwi Jr.’s Cooler Returns “timely.” But what year is it, again? On their sophomoric smash-up released world-wide by Sub Pop Records, Kiwi Jr. cycle through the recent zigs and looming zags of the new decade, squinting anew at New Year’s parties forgotten and under-investigated small town diner fires, piecing together low-stakes conspiracy theories on what’s coming down the pike in 2021. Put 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, 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.

A chronically detuned spin of the dial through swivel-chair distractions and WFH daydreams, an immersive ctrl-tab deluge cycling through popular listicle distractions like the unentombing of Richard III, or the deja vu destruction of the Glasgow School of Art, Kiwi Jr. sing this song to an indoor audience, crisscrossing canceled, every other prestige distraction source wrung dry, only songwriting remaining to deliver engrossing tales to the populace, just how I imagine it worked in the old days. Fixing loose ingredients into a sturdy whip, Kiwi Jr. beam in live from the 9-5, striding into 2021 with a mastered brainwave that comes equally from the back room of the record store as the penalty box. And how do we, left holding this box of deliberate entanglements, sign off to those as yet uninitiated, undecided, uncertain, unseen, absent return coordinates – Best Wishes, Warm Regards, Good Luck? Cooler Returns, Cooler Returns, C o o l e r R e t u r n s !

Kiwi Jr
Cooler Returns
Tracklist
Sub Pop Records

1. Tyler
2. Undecided Voters
3. Maid Marian’s Toast
4. Highlights of 100
5. Only Here for a Haircut
6. Cooler Returns
7. Guilty Party
8. Omaha
9. Domino
10. Nashville Wedding
11. Dodger
12. Norma Jean’s Jacket
13. Waiting in Line

For Canada buyers only, the first 200 LP copies available on Bandcamp will be on white vinyl. Kiwi Club Records will be distributed to Canadian stores via Fontana North.