ALL AGES
STANDING ROOM ONLY
Growing up, Jonathon Linaberry was obsessed with the radio.
“I remember sitting there at night, glued to the boombox, cassette player ready to record whenever my favorite songs came on,” he recalls. “There was something so thrilling about it, something romantic that I think we’ve lost now that everything’s available at our fingertips. I wanted to find a way to get back to that place, to recapture those feelings of excitement and anticipation and possibility.”
Linaberry does precisely that on Radio Waves, his sixth studio album as The Bones Of J.R. Jones. Recorded in Toronto with producer Robbie Lackritz (Feist, Bahamas), the collection is moody and hypnotic, steeped in the sonic landscape of the ’80s and ’90s as it excavates the past with equal parts nostalgia and curiosity. The arrangements are utterly entrancing here, built on the tension between acoustic instruments and retro synthesizers, and Linaberry’s performances are raw and visceral, at times aching in their vulnerability. Put it all together and you’ve got a poignant exploration of memory and longing delivered by a relentless searcher, a revelatory work of personal reflection steeped in the endless beauty, pain, and chaos of youth.
“I’ve never really resonated with the idea of ‘the good old days,’” Linaberry reflects. “Your understanding of the past and your relationship with it change as you get older, and I’ve always been more interested in the evolution of those feelings than in wearing any kind of rose-colored glasses.”
After their Rick-Rubin-produced debut album, and a self-produced second record featuring songs they’d written for an award winning Netflix film, Ruen Brothers emerged with a powerful and timeless ode to Western classics on their 2023 ‘Ten Paces’. Showcasing their mixing, mastering, writing and soundscape design talents, the British duo hit neo-noir gold on the ten song collection – their first for Yep Roc Records – with classic melodies and dulcet, soaring vocal tones, laced with western guitar motifs and reverberant production.
