Blowin’ Up

Tired of Throwin’ Up and Growin’ Up, Kiwi Jr. are finally Blowin’ Up. Confronting the desperate neon of a guitar group approaching statesmen status on their fourth album, Kiwi screech sideways to make the last exit to Michigan, laying down 10 drivetime highlights daydreaming of a sweet spot between swift pain & lucrative settlement, trudging daylight through clerical quicksand & watching the tides rise up to meet our wheels. Wintering at Detroit’s HIGH BIAS Studios, our veteran “Juniors” take stock & make rock, punching the clock with Graham Walsh (Holy Fuck) behind the board & Nicolas Vernhes (Deerhunter, Silver Jews) fine-tuning the mix. Assembling a local posse for urgent tactical support, Kiwi recruit Detroit’s real Big Three – Protomartyr, Stef Chura, Fred Thomas – and beam in additional moonlighters Margaux Bouchaudon of En Attendant Ana, and Kerri Maclellan of Alvvays. Blowin’ Up dissects topical turmoil and asks “who made this big mess”, predicting on the title track “when detectives get here Monday morning, it’s our fingerprints on the scene.” Bricolaged together from greige 9-5s and bleary-eyed stagetimes, Kiwi file a report from the front, the nonstop Christmas-morning-coal mouthfeel of daily life in ’25 smashburgered into a diamond-rich slurry: “Language arts on the way out-if you’ve anything clever to say you better say it now” (Landscape with Limousine). A veritable Kiwipedia regurgitating the band’s diet of esoteric information, no part of modern life is left unvitamixed in the Blowin’ Up smoothie: the mother-daughter crimesolving duo of Photos of the Reenactment; relocation to the previously uncharted Hard Drive, Ontario (“it’s hard to leave home with your heart on a hard-drive”); and adolescent trips across the border to source Labatt 50 at the Canadian drinking age in textbook Kiwi detour Pure Michigan: “I’m losing perspective on the Ambassador Bridge; I’m 19 in Windsor and that’s Pure Michigan.” ’68 Comebacking from two years of writing and touring in pre-season shape, toned and sleeveless, jumpsuits creaseless, Kiwi uncrunch their detuned aloofness into a newer, brighter consideration. The New-Wavey World Like Polly, written for Lemonhead’s muse Polly Noonan, draws a dividing line in the oft put-on slacker attitude: “I wanna live in a world like Polly and pretend it’s cool to pretend not to care.” Rock City in the rearview, back in Toronto post-thaw, steam billowing from factories pressing this airtight LP4, Kiwi swing from the CN Tower picking choppers apart like pistachios: a Can-Con King Kong, four albums deep & playing just to play. Blowin’ Up is Kiwi Jr. at their most optimistic, earnest beyond their Nielsen rating age demographic: “I am on your side!” they repeat in Painting after Painting, and we believe them; old friends with new songs, Kiwi Jr. is on our side, and they’re about to blow up.