Singled Out: Sun Junkies' Stay 4 The Night

Keavin Wiggins | 11-24-2023

Canadian indie rockers Sun Junkies recently released their sophomore album "Parachuting", and to celebrate we asked vocalist and rhythm guitarist Noah Carmichael to tell us about the focus track "Stay 4 The Night". Here is the story:

Stay 4 the Night was essentially me listing off a bunch of anxieties that were going on in my life at the time and basically telling them to f*** off. I was struggling with the fact that I had lost touch with most of my old friends, not because of any kind of turmoil but just from distance and time. I started to convince myself that these people blamed me for the loss of contact, when in reality I'm sure we all understand that sometimes things just change. The "I'm not listening to you" line was basically my way of trying to push out these intrusive thoughts. It was the thoughts in my own brain I was protesting. As bleak and introspective as that sounds, in the end I decided that love is too important to let all these insecurities get in the way. "If love is blind I don't wanna see and I'll tear out both my eyes so I can't peek." Like most of "Parachuting" this is a song about facing your fears and well, the fact that the passage of time f***ing sucks.

The bridge "it feels like we've been running for our lives..." section of the song was taken from a demo we had previously recorded in our basement. We thought the feel was perfect on the original recording and couldn't seem to replicate it in the studio. We also thought it made for a really interesting sonic change with guitar/drums/bass and vocal tones all changing in an instant.

The breakdown section of the song is arranged so that each bar introduces a new instrument starting with guitar until a lead guitar, bass, drums, trumpet, violin and glockenspiel are all being played together.

We had a group of 10 of our friends come into the studio to record a chanting backup vocal in the choruses of the song.

"Stay 4 The Night" was the last song I wrote for "Parachuting". The album felt like it was just missing something and I felt like I needed another catchy straight-forward tune. A "hit" if you will. Which is something almost impossible to conjure up. needless to say, this one took a while to even be conceived. I was getting really sick a lot around this time to the point where I wasn't able to sing which made this task even more impossible and added to the never ending stresses of being in a band and making an album. Because of this I was scheduled for a tonsillectomy just a week after the day that I wrote this song. Seeing as I knew I would be on a bit of a vocal hiatus for the coming weeks, I rushed the guys in for a jam. I needed to show them the final song from the album and to get a sh*tty demo so that we wouldn't forget our parts during my recovery. It ended up being one of our favourite tracks we've put out so far.

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