Produced by Wolf Parade’s Dan Boeckner, the latest from the Toronto band accompanies manic, referential lyrics with neon-tinted, futurist power-pop.
Kiwi Jr. like to work fast. That’s less a comment on their prodigious productivity, which has yielded three albums in four years, than their approach to songcraft. If not strict adherents of the “don’t bore us, get to the chorus” rule, the Toronto quartet are certainly believers in “be terse, get to the verse,” often doing away with any semblance of an intro to jump right into action. And in any given Kiwi Jr. song, the action is invariably happening at singer/guitarist Jeremy Gaudet’s microphone, where he dispenses an endlessly scrolling feed of pop-culture signposts, road stories, hyper-local scenery, social satire, sports reports, religious allegories, absurdist observations, drinking misadventures, and repurposed classic-rock lyrics—sometimes in the span of a single verse. On their 2019 debut Football Money, Kiwi Jr.’s jacked-up jangle-punk fit in a lineage that links 1980s fleet-fingered favorites like the Feelies with modern-day strummers like Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever. But over time, it’s become clear this band’s runaway-train momentum is less a studied aesthetic choice than a practical measure to keep pace with their frontman’s rapid-fire rhetoric and ping-ponging melodies.
On Chopper, Gaudet’s Malkmusian cadences and crooked hooks continue to lead the way. As ever, he piles on his witticisms like sight gags in an Airplane! flick—if not every line hits the mark, there’s still more than enough clever one-liners to keep you thoroughly amused. But after leaning into a rootsier, piano-gilded sound on last year’s Cooler Returns, Kiwi Jr. slingshot into the opposite direction with producer Dan Boeckner of Wolf Parade, whose integration of indie rock and carnivalesque keyboards provides Kiwi Jr. with a template for their own maximalist pursuits. While stopping short of a full-blown synth-pop makeover, Chopper slathers on enough neon-tinted textures to reorient Kiwi Jr. away from the jangle-rock canon and toward the futurist power-pop of the Cars, New Pornographers, and the Strokes circa Room on Fire.
At times, the synth injection simply serves to amplify the mania of an already manic band: “Parasite II” is “12:51” as conceived by Bong Joon-ho, with Gaudet cheekily invoking the Korean director’s class-warfare parable to interrogate his own excessive consumption (“There’s got to be another man in the house who’s drinking all my beer”) over a circular keyboard squelch that rings out like a police siren. But the thicker sound also accommodates a greater emotional depth. “Night Vision” has all the hallmarks of a textbook Kiwi Jr. tune, instantly transporting you into its tour-themed scenes of Dodge Caravans and Petro-Canada gas stations like you’re joining a TV show already in progress. But once its tensely jabbed guitar line gets submerged in an aquatic, synth-smeared breakdown, the song transforms into something much more melancholic and dramatic than we’re used to hearing from this normally carefree band.
While Gaudet is still the sort of writer who’ll base his most wistful chorus around a Julie Andrews shout-out (“The Sound of Music”) or name the album’s casually triumphant, “Heroes”-esque closer after The Masked Singer, his referential lyrics are often imbued with a sobering subtext. Kiwi Jr.’s records have served the tertiary function of documenting the Prince Edward Island-born Gaudet’s life in his adopted home of Toronto, as he name-dropped tourist attractions like the CN Tower and notorious neighborhood hubs like the Dufferin Mall with wide-eyed zeal. But on Chopper, he taps into less glamorous, more authentic local experiences. Amid the haunted-house ambiance of “Contract Killers,” Gaudet takes a stroll down Joe Shuster Way, a west-end street named after the Toronto-born co-creator of the original Superman comic, but one that’s hardly fit for a hero: It’s a thoroughly unremarkable, suburban-style roadway flanked by train tracks and condo towers, making it the ideal setting for Gaudet to reflect on his hopelessly Clark Kent life. (“Superman probably made more money than me,” he shrugs.)
For those not attuned to the poetic significance of insignificant Toronto streets, the album hits its peak on “The Extra Sees the Film,” which sounds like a Traveling Wilburys song blissfully floating in space, yet thrusts us into the most awkward of social situations. Standing around a conversation circle dominated by a pretty-boy babe magnet who’s like a “human scorpion jacket from Drive,” Gaudet spots an opportunity to ingratiate himself: “He talks about Los Angeles, that's a cue for you to jump in/‘Excuse me I couldn't help overhear you mention L.A./See, I was there for Kobe Bryant's last NBA game.’” It’s the sort of oddly morbid ice-breaker that lands with all the subtlety of a record scratch, and a dagger to the heart of anyone who’s ever tried too hard to make themselves seem more interesting in mixed company. But where Gaudet may have once regaled such awkward scenarios with tongue piercing his cheek, there’s a tenderness and grace to his delivery here that draws out the pathos of feeling like you’re always on the outside looking in. “The extra sees the film and totally collapses,” he sings on the crestfallen chorus. As Chopper reaffirms, Kiwi Jr. may never be the kind of band that deals in linear narratives or grand conceptual statements. But like the background bit actors that fill out the frames of a big-screen epic, their songs amass minor details to major effect.
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