Singled Out: Junro's Matches

Keavin Wiggins | 11-02-2022

Matches cover art

Southern New England rockers Junro are releasing their "Matches
EP this week and to celebrate we asked them to tell us about the title track, "Matches". Here is the story:

From a song-writing perspective for the EP, Matches was the biggest struggle for us. When working with Andrew Groves (Arcane Roots) on the pre-production, we ended up having the most revisions for this track. So many, in fact, we ended up losing count after 20 demo versions. There were several parts of the original versions of the song that we thought were awesome that ultimately got scrapped to make the song as a whole flow a lot better. We were very skeptical, but in the end, the final version of the song turned out so good, that all of it was worth it.

A big part of Junro's musical choices is centered around using non-typical time signatures in a creative way as to not take away from the listener experience. We strive to be creative musically while maintaining catchiness and accessibility. This presented a challenge in Matches since we needed the different parts of the song to flow together seamlessly. The original versions of the song had a power pre-chorus and an extended bridge which ended up not making it into the final version of the song. We had to change our focus to be more on intent. We had to ask ourselves "what purpose is this part serving in the song as a whole?". If the answer was merely "well, it's a cool part..." we tried a version without that part to see if losing it made any impact on the big picture of a great song. There were also some decisions we had to optimize the flow. For example, the 1st verse is in 7 / 4 timing, and originally the 2nd verse was also, until we realized that having the 2nd verse in 3 / 4 timing gave the song a more natural flow giving us the dynamic room to go much harder in the bridge that follows.

In the end, we legitimately couldn't be happier with the final version of this song. In a lot of way, this feels like some of the best work we have been able to release both as a band and individually as musicians. This is a release we are all very proud of.

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen for yourself here and learn more about the album here