Corridor Junior Vinyl LP Indies/Loser Yellow Colour 2019

Corridor are a group from Montreal and this is their Sub Pop debut, Junior. The rock'n'roll band had barely inked their record deal when they surfed into studio, racing against time to make the most dazzling, immediate and inventive album of their young career: 39 minutes of darting and dodging guitars, spiraling vocal harmonies, and the complicated, goldenrod nostalgia of a Sunday mid-afternoon.

Singers, two guitars, bass, drums: the timelessness of the setup underpins the timelessness of the sound, a rock'n'roll borrowing from each of the past six decades—punk and pop, psych and jangle, daydream and swoon. This is music that's muscular, exciting and full of love, its riffs a kind of medicine. Whereas Corridor's past work could sometimes seem overstuffed, twenty ideas to the same song, the new work is hypnotic, distilled.

Sub Pop have never before, in their 33-year history, signed a Francophone act. Maybe the band's magic springs from their ingenious hooks, their topaz-tinted vision. Maybe it's the panache of Québec's insurgent underground scene, or the camaraderie of Robert and Berthiaume, who have played together since they were 14. Maybe it's their name—a hallway crossed with a toreador. Probably it's all of these, and none of them: Junior is a joy, a hasty miracle, because it's so much damn fun to listen to. This album is 39 minutes; each day has 24 hours; you can listen 36 times before tomorrow.