Cooler Returns

Editors’ Notes Close to a year before Kiwi Jr. recorded their second LP, vocalist/guitarist Jeremy Gaudet had figured out a system to get their songwriting done more efficiently. “I had this big binder, like a Five Star binder that you would have for school, and we called it the LP Two Bible,” Gaudet says. “Any time any of us at practice, or outside of practice even, had an idea, we would say, ‘Oh, yeah. Put it in the bible.’ Then by the end of it, before we go to record, we have this binder full of so many ideas and lyrics that we can just constantly reference.” With that plan in mind, the Toronto indie rockers wanted to return to the studio quickly after the full rollout for 2019's twice-released Football Money—even if unable to test many of the songs live due to lockdown restrictions. Despite the setbacks, the band carried through with another crafty blend of jangling hooks and effervescent melodies—and even a few guitar solos for good measure—alongside Gaudet’s witty, often humorous and highly specific narratives. “It wasn't the easiest environment, but the pandemic did allow us more time because we had to delay the initial sessions,” Gaudet says. “We're really trying to create something in the studio that sounds how we hope it will sound whenever we're able to play live again.” Here, Gaudet and guitarist Brian Murphy walk us through every song on the album.

Tyler
Jeremy Gaudet: “As soon as I had the demo for it, we all agreed this would be a wicked lead-off track for the second record. There's a lot of stuff going on that's packed into a two-minute song. I think I had the opening lines first and then I started thinking about writing from a character's perspective. I knew that if I was going to use someone's name, I wanted it to be a name that I couldn't think of any other songs that had that name used before. Tyler just popped out. It's one of those funny names like Kyle or something where, really, only in your life, you meet people with those names that were born in the '80s onward, right? It's super limited to our generation, I feel like.”

Undecided Voters
Brian Murphy: “It’s probably the oldest song on Cooler Returns that wasn't around during Football Money. We got chances to play it live a lot, which was good to test it out and see what arrangement ideas were working and what wasn't and to see crowd reaction to a song that they've never heard before. If they react well, then that's obviously a good sign.”
JG: “I knew I wanted to write something set in a school. My friend was talking about how the Glasgow arts school burned down twice, and so I was looking into that and I was thinking how dramatic that is for a small place like Glasgow. Then I started to think this whole idea of school rivals within a school, like rival classmates, and I started to think about that movie Election, the Reese Witherspoon one. In this day and age where everyone is super woke, how could you possibly be undecided in 2020? That's kind of meant to be leveled as like an insult or something.”

Maid Marian’s Toast
JG: “The song is looking at people working restaurant jobs and half the people wanting to burn the place down. Musically, I was definitely thinking about two things. I specifically remember thinking about the Wallflowers, like Bringing Down the Horse-era The Wallflowers, and also there was like an Orange Juice or a Pastels vibe, some of that early-’80s or mid-’80s Scottish rock.”

Highlights of 100
JG: “This is the second song we've had called 'Highlights of 100' just because I really like the title. There's a lot about film in this song. Throughout the whole outro, you're getting this story about being on a film set and there being different mini universes everywhere. I was probably influenced by that Tarantino movie that came out [Once Upon a Time in Hollywood] where they're constantly on set and they're in Western gear.”

Only Here for a Haircut
JG: “This song is a true story about how I went to a friend's house to get a haircut from his girlfriend because she used to cut all of her friends' and his friends' hair for free. It was just a fun neighborhood thing that she did. I went over there and my friend, the boyfriend, was not home. I felt something really awkward was happening. The movie Tomb Raider was on TV. Then I found out via text, like mid-haircut, that they had broken up and I was just like, 'What am I doing here? This is a terrible feeling.' That was the initial germ of the idea.”

Cooler Returns
JG: “This is one where we had the instrumental for a long time and I had no idea what I was going to write this song about. The lyrics really came together in piecemeal over a year. It wasn't one like 'Maid Marian's Toast' where I just sat down and wrote it, or 'Dodger' is another one that we'll get to where I just write that song. I had to pick at it for a while because the phrasing is a little bit off, because you've got that stop-start-y main riff and rhythm that you have to follow in the verses.”

Guilty Party
BM: “This is one we played for probably over a year live and it always went over well at shows, which is a good sign. Like I was saying, if no one has heard it before and they react to it well, then it's usually a good sign. We had the arrangement pretty close. We didn't have to fight with it too much. We were really going for an XTC thing on the bridge. I don't know if we got it or not.”

Omaha
JG: “This one I wrote the lyrics first. Not all the lyrics, but a very specific idea of what they call the Woodstock of capitalism, this huge shareholders meeting in Omaha that they have in these coliseums or big arenas and people from all over America and Canada go to—and all these business people and investors attend meetings and have lanyards. I was thinking, like, ‘Wouldn't it be cool if there was a movie or a story about two people meeting at such a terrible-sounding event and having an affair or something? Almost like an '80s Michael Douglas/Adrian Lyne kind of thing.”

Domino
JG: “This or ‘Nashville Wedding’ would be two of the oldest Kiwi Jr. songs, period. Nothing's changed really except for some of Brian's guitar flourishes, and the length of the intro and outro have been shortened a bit. There would probably be some people who have a demo MP3 of this somewhere from 2016, because it used to be on SoundCloud before we had any fans. Then we tracked it for Football Money and it just didn't quite work. And so we said, 'Okay, we finally have to nail it this time,' because it's been a live fan favorite for a while. The lyric of this one has a little to do with listening to true-crime podcasts and the news and everything trying to scare you and living on a bad corner, which I do, and just the idea of an unknown and just learning to live with it.”

Nashville Wedding
JG: “The lyric is about as straightforward as you're going to get from me about just crashing somebody's wedding.
It had a different title, and then in the studio we decided to call it as such because a) we use a lot of Nashville guitars on it and b) one of our friends got married in Tennessee recently and the chorus references Tennessee. I had to assure her that this song about having a miserable time at a wedding was not about her wedding. I had to write her an email before the album came out. I was like, 'Hey, you're going to hear something. It's not about you.'”

Dodger
JG: “This song is not about sports at all, but I thought that somebody who is living in the past and somebody who is moving on to the future or the present could really be represented by somebody who is still wearing a Brooklyn Dodgers hat or waiting for the Dodgers to move back to Brooklyn compared to somebody who is not worried about living on the Pacific West Coast and loving life. It's as simple as it gets, really. Lyrically, there was so many sports references all the time. Like we're a total jock band. LP three is going to be called Jock Jams.”
BM: “Hopefully, we get to open for AC/DC someday.”

Norma Jean’s Jacket
JG: “I'm quite pleased with this one. This is about as throwback rock ’n’ roll, rootsy '70s rock ’n’ roll as we get. Definitely a lot of Rolling Stones—attempted vibes. There's also something about this one that I think is funny. Every chorus starts out with me really over the top, sincerely singing the words 'heartache and sorrow'—which is so off-brand for our band. Sometimes we try to go for laughs too much and then realize that not everyone is looking to laugh when we put on a record.”

Waiting in Line
BM: “I remember we had a team meeting over the Jesus shirt lyric on this one. There was a few different options for what kind of shirt is this person wearing. I do remember the four of us all huddled and you were like, ‘Okay, what's it going to be? We need to decide right now.’ I was picturing it as one of those sort of dumb T-shirts with Jesus giving the thumbs up or whatever that Urban Outfitters used to sell. That's how I pictured it.”