New Video: Corridor Shares a Shimmering Rumination on Mortality

Mimi, Corridor‘s long-awaited and highly-anticipated fourth album is slated for an April 26, 2024 release on CD, LP and DSP globally through Sub Pop and across Canada through Bonsound.

The 8-song album, which was co-produced by the band and Joojoo Ashworth and recorded at Montréal-based Studio Gamma and mastered by Brooklyn’s Heba Kadry Mastering, derives its name from Jonathan Robert’s cat and features — presumably — Mimi’s face on the album artwork. Thematically, the album as the band explains is about “getting older” and “figuring out new parts of life,” inspired and informed by the type of personal changes that accompany the passage of time. And while the album’s material reflects a newfound and perhaps hard-won contemplative maturity, sonically, Mimi is reportedly a huge step forward with the band expanding on the sound of 2019’s critically applauded Junior with ever more richly detailed music rooted in a distinct rhythm pulse that recalls post-punk’s own classic era of meshing dance and rock textures.

For the acclaimed Montréalers and their fans, Mimi will feel like a fresh break — even for a band that has established themselves as being forward-thinking. Much like its predecessor, Mimi sees Corridor being impossible to pin down from song to song; however, whereas the elastic guitar rock of Junior came together quickly — or as the band’s Jonathan Robert describes the process ” in a rush” — then the steady-as-they-go creative pace of Mimi marked a desire to break from the “exhausting” work ethic that birthed Junior.

“The goal was to work differently, which is the goal we have every time we work on a new album—to build something in a new way,” Robert explains. “This time, we took our time.” During the summer of 2020, the members of the band — Jonathan Robert (vocals, guitar), Dominic Berthiaume (vocals, bass), Julien Bakvis (drums) and multi-instrumentalist Samuel Gougoux — holed away in a cottage to engage in the sort of creative experimentation that would lead to Mimi‘s material. “We went there to write, and a lot of ideas came from that retreat,” Berthiaume explains. “We didn’t end up with songs as much as we did ideas, so the result is a collage of the ideas.”

After that productive writing retreat, the band continued to tinker with the songs’ raw parts digitally and remotely over the next few years with co-producer Joojoo Ashworth leading their own specific talents in the theoretical booth. This process was naturally a byproduct of not having access to their rehearsal space as the COVID-19 pandemic faded into public view, but it was also a result of the band leaning header into incorporating electronic textures than previously.

 “For a long time, we identified as a guitar-oriented band, and the goal of making this whole record was trying to get away from that,” Berthiaume says, but while admitting that the band encountered their own challenges as a result: “We had to figure out how to make new songs without having the chance to play together. It was complicated sometimes.”

Some of the album’s new energy and life may be owed to Samuel Gougoux joining the band full-time, after pitching in on live performances in the past. “I come more from a background of electronic music, so it was nice to involve that with the band more,” he explains.

Mimi‘s first single “Mourir Demain” is built around brightly shimming and chiming guitars and soaring synths and post-punk like angular rhythms serving as lush, velvety and somewhat uneasy bed for Robert’s plaintive delivery ruminating on his looming mortality with a brutally, unvarnished yet very fearful realism. “I wrote it when my girlfriend and I were shopping for life insurance,” Corridor’s Robert says with a laugh. “With our little daughter growing up, we also considered making our will. I said to myself, ‘Oh shit, from now on I’m slowly starting to plan my death.”
 

Directed by Paul Jacobs, the accompanying video for “Mourir Demain,” features hand-drawn and animated images of death and despair that’s simultaneously beautiful and unsettling.

The Montréal-based JOVM mainstays also announced international tour dates this year to support Mimi that include a hometown show at Le National, one of my favorite rooms in Montréal to catch a show, on October 4. The tour will also include a set at Pitchfork Music Festival Mexico City and multiple sets at this year’s SXSW. More live dates will be coming. But for now, tour dates are below.
 
Sat. Mar. 09 – Mexico City, MX – Pitchfork Music Festival Mexico City
Tue. Mar. 12 –  Los Angeles, CA – Ghengis Cohen
Wed. Mar. 13 – Austin, TX – SXSW
Thu. Mar. 14 – Austin, TX – SXSW
Fri. Mar. 15 – Austin, TX – SXSW
Thu. May 30 – McGill, NV – Schellraiser Festival
Fri. Oct. 04 – Montreal, QC – Le National

Before I forget, Mimi is also available to preorder from Sub Pop. LP preorders from megamart.subpop.com and select independent retailers in North America will receive the Loser Edition on Baby Pink vinyl, while stock lasts. LP preorders from Mega Mart 2, the new UK-based sib ling site to Sub Pop Mega Mart and select independent retailers across the UK and European Union will receive the Loser Edition on Blue vinyl, while stock lasts.