Junior Boys - Waiting Game (LP) - White Vinyl

Junior Boys took their time with this one. Waiting Game arrived on October 28, 2022 on City Slang, six years after Big Black Coat, and it feels like a record shaped by quiet hours and long pauses. The Canadian duo of Jeremy Greenspan and Matt Didemus have always thrived in the space between electro, R&B, and pop, but here they lean into the hush. Songs move with a late night shuffle, keys glow soft like streetlights, and Greenspan’s voice hangs close to the mic, more confidant than narrator.

“Night Walk” sets the tone. It creeps in on a restrained pulse and a flicker of synth, patient and a little ghostly, the kind of track that invites you to lean closer. That approach threads through the album. You get tight drum machine patterns, small flecks of percussion, and bass that doesn’t thump so much as breathe. Junior Boys have always been master editors, but Waiting Game trims to the bone, then finds warmth in the negative space. Where So This Is Goodbye had more overt hooks and Big Black Coat flirted with the dance floor, this one prefers a dim room, a comfortable chair, and the volume just high enough to catch the inhale before a vocal line.

The restraint never feels austere. You can hear the duo’s ear for detail in the way a synth pad blooms for half a bar, then withdraws, or how a backing vocal curls around a lead phrase and disappears. The tempos rarely hurry, which gives the melodies room to unfold. There is romance here, and a little melancholy, but without melodrama. The songs feel like postcards from Hamilton after midnight, a city that has always been part of Junior Boys’ atmosphere, even when Didemus is working from Berlin and the files are pinging back and forth across time zones.

Part of the pleasure is how alive these quiet arrangements feel. A single clap lands with intention. A chord change reassesses the mood. You catch traces of classic synth pop and quiet storm R&B, not as throwbacks but as currents underneath the surface. Greenspan has a way of letting a chorus sneak up on you. It might be two notes, a shift in phrasing, or the suggestion of harmony that turns a line into a hook. The album rewards attention in the same way a good short story does. A detail introduced in the first paragraph pays off later, and by the end the whole thing clicks.

Critics picked up on that focus. Outlets like Pitchfork and The Guardian praised the album’s patience and intimacy, noting how it trades obvious payoffs for something subtler. That fits. Waiting Game does not try to outshine their earlier peaks. It inhabits a narrower band of color, then makes those shades glow. Listen to how the synths detune slightly as if the song itself is exhaling, or how a bassline loosens at the end of a phrase and the whole track leans forward a fraction. Those are small choices, and they tell you this was built by two people who trust their instincts.

If you collect Junior Boys vinyl, this is the one you reach for after everyone else has gone home. The dynamic range and the silence between the notes make sense on wax, where the needle accentuates the textures and the low end feels natural rather than hyped. Waiting Game vinyl slid into shops alongside a wave of long delayed releases in 2022, and it held its own by not competing on volume. If you like to buy Junior Boys records online, keep an eye on City Slang pressings, since the label has handled their catalog for years. Junior Boys albums on vinyl tend to be the kind you put on late and let spin through the runout while you decide whether to call it a night.

What I love most is how humane it feels. No forced drama, no attempt to chase a trend. Just two musicians with a decades long partnership, building little worlds out of a drum pattern and a few chords, trusting that subtlety can be as gripping as spectacle. Waiting Game doesn’t shout for your attention. It earns it, slowly, and keeps it long after the last synth fades.