Press Release:
After much speculation, Paper + Plastick is excited to officially welcome Toronto’s Junior Battles to its ever growing roster. Slated to release the band’s full-length debut, Idle Ages, on June 28th on vinyl, CD and digitally, Junior Battles have posted the first song and album opener “Seventeen” on their homepage www.idleages.com. Information regarding a pre-sale and a US tour will be announced shortly.
“I started to like Junior Battles because of the 90s melodic, pop-punk influence,” admits Paper + Plastick founder Vinnie Fiorello, “but if that was the hook that got me on board to start with, then the new songs have me becoming a true fan of the band. The 90's pop-punk blasts are still there, but on the new record the band adds in musical twists and turns, sudden stops and starts, and melody mixed with gruff vocals. The band mixes layers of influence under a nice candy coating of pop punk nostalgia without ever being a throwback."
Fueled by the call and response vocal duo of guitarist Aaron Zorgel and Sam Sutherland, Idle Ages is chock full of shout along verses and choruses that helped the band accrue loyal fans since forming in 2008. Recorded with Steve Rizun (The Flatliners, O Pioneers, The Snips) at his Drive Studios in Ontario, Canada, Idle Ages has been the better part of a year in the making. Idle Ages was expected to be finished by Christmas of 2010, the band’s insatiable urge to tour lead them out on the road twice while trying to wrap the record. Zorgel comments on the delay by stating “We figure, who knows how many chances we're going to have to make a full-length record? We wanted to take our time with everything, and make sure we were going to love it 10 years later. And that meant not settling for anything, ever.”
Not settling allowed the band to explore a bit on this full-length, as opposed to their previous 7-inches and EPs. “We've always felt like a full-length is a great chance to make some weird choices you couldn't on a 7" or with an EP,” interjects Sutherland. “It's a chance to do something a little more grandiose, and we wanted to reach out to some friends and get them to add to this monstrosity we were trying to make. It helps keep things varied, so you're not just listening to me and Aaron drone on about our lives for half an hour.” Enlisting a diverse group of friends, Idle Ages features guest appearances from ex-Hold Steady member Franz Nicolay (piano, organ, banjo), Bomb The Music Industry’s Matt Keegan (trombone), and hardcore vocals from fellow Canuck Damian Abraham of Fucked Up.
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Touching on topics nearly every 20-something fan who grew up on a healthy diet of punk rock can relate to, Idle Ages is a reflection on one’s life and how your past ideals have influenced your present state of mind, and how that will affect the course of your life. “[Aaron and I are] both a few years out of school, and had reached a point in our mid-20s where we felt kind of lost. It’s not a record about nostalgia, but there's a lot of looking back at the way you felt when you were 15, 16, and how that affects you now that you're 25 and you've kind of turned into an adult without realizing it,” says Sutherland. Album opener “Seventeen” not only sets the lyrical tone for the entire album (“We only answer to ourselves/we always stayed true to the ideals we held/ when we were sober and seventeen/ so you wake up every morning and you compromise/ it’s easy to forget the places where you tried to draw the line”), but musically, with the band’s catchy brand of pop-punk shining through, filled with sing-along choruses and hooks galore.
As Sutherland sums it up, “We ended up using a lot of ages as signposts along the way. I felt a really specific way about the way I thought the world should work when I was 17. And this record is about trying to figure out if you were right.”
