A professional wrestler, a children's book author and the head of a non-profit organisation walk into a bar!. There's a great punchline to that out there somewhere, but we'll have to leave that to the neologists. The in-real-life result of this meeting of personalities is South Wales trio Junior, a pop punk band with more on their minds than girls, skateboards and pizza.
"We all liked the idea of a concept album, and building our own little world that's explained and explored through each of the songs," says guitarist / vocalist Matt Attard of Junior's mini-album, JuniorLand; "We're all quite arty people anyway and we really saw this as more of a whole project than just an EP - There are several storylines that intertwine through JuniorLand. We used retro-suburbia as our framework, and even used samples on a bunch of the tracks, so even the sound of these old recordings sets the scene of what it "looks like" in JuniorLand. The samples come from all sorts of places, like informercials and old documentaries."
Whilst the band's conceptual 'JuniorLand' carries an aesthetic straight out of Pleasantville via a Don Draper ad campaign, its sound is a little more contemporary. In parts reminiscent of Blink 182's rightfully revered 2003 self titled album, JuniorLand is highly melodic, swathed in big guitars and layered lead vocals where guitarist Attard (who also handles all of the band's graphic design) and bassist Mark Andrews, take turns to belt out impassioned hooks. "We made a real effort with dynamics and songwriting to make this release stand out," opines Attard, "The best comparison is self-titled era Blink, with a dash of Dashboard Confessional, but with elements of Four Year Strong and All Time Low thrown in for good measure - they all just know how to pen a great tune! JuniorLand is almost more of a pop record than a standard pop-punk album - it's not just double time drums, wall to wall guitars and shouting that demands finger pointing all the way through."
Junior (the lineup completed by drummer Si Martin) do face a bit of a geographical hurdle, with bassist Andrews residing in the US ever since securing a contract with professional wrestling company, TNA (Total Nonstop Action): "Every kid wants to be a Power Ranger, and so I figured being a wrestler is the next best thing," laughs Andrews; "I started when I was pretty young, and I've just been changing, learning, growing, developing and pushing myself ever since. So it's awesome that it's recently allowed me onto an even higher level to be pushing myself at, ever since winning British Bootcamp and securing my contract with TNA." And it's not just Andrews who has the bug, Matt has also entered the wrestling world: by doing design work for wrestlers, and composing some entrance music.
Despite their assorted serious pursuits outside of the band, Junior still have a serious dose of ambition. Speaking of his ambitions Andrews clarifies "I don't just want to be a wrestler - I always want to achieve as much in my life as possible. It is hard work, and since moving to America it's made the band that little bit harder, but we still make it work. We FaceTime each other all the time, and we even managed to record a The Wonder Years cover while we were on different sides of the world!" As if to avoid any confusion, he comments "We want to take over the world! If you told us a year ago that we'd be on our first tour, we would've thought that was the finish line, but with that under our belts, we're looking for the next challenge. We want to be bigger than the mould we're put in. And then when we're bigger, keep building from there, and continually pushing ourselves to achieve more."
We'd suggest you don't argue, he might just suplex you; it's much more painless to just give JuniorLand your attention instead.
JuniorLand Track Listing:
1. A House That's Not Quite A Home
2. Maria
3. That Pretty Dress
4. Lakeside
5. If I Had The Time I'd Tell You I'm Not Sorry
6. Anywhere But Here
7. Epilogue (We Hope You Enjoyed Your Stay)
Upcoming Tour Dates:
Junior are just wrapping up their debut UK tour, with the following dates remaining:
17/8 - Bournemouth, The Anvil
19/8 - Cardiff, Undertone
Watch lead single "Anywhere But Here":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nb-eUhmZbAU
EP 'JuniorLand' is released on October 16th.
Preorder at:
Physical- https://ambitionrecords.tictail.com/
Digital- www.musicofjunior.bandcamp.com
More info: https://www.facebook.com/musicofjunior | https://twitter.com/musicofjunior
https://twitter.com/musicofjunior
