JR JR - Back to the Land
2025 • LOVE IS EZ RECORDS • INDIE POP
90/100
Back in the early 2010s, Detroit duo JR JR (formerly Dale Earnhardt Jr Jr) were the kind of team you kept in rotation: round ball rock movement, great chemistry, and an indie-pop highlight reel. But like many elder millennials, they took their lumps—broke up with their label, wandered through a post-algorithm haze, and emerged into a weirder, noisier world.
Back to the Land is their reaction to that noise, a return to the simple, the true, the kind. The album doesn’t mention the internet, social media, or AI, but you feel its absence in the negative space of what’s being painted. It reclaims mental peace from creeping doubt (see “Domino”: “Try to be a man, she said, oh no, oh no, I’ve heard it all before!”), reminds us to connect (“Salty Dog”: “Come on baby, let’s forget ourselves.”), and urges us outdoors (“Sunburn”: “Got that sunburn on my shoulders, can’t get that staying in my room.”). It’s an album-length plea from two musicians who remember life before the algorithm, a soundtrack for those who got lost in 2014 and are still looking for a way out.
“Corry Corry,” the shortest track, plays like a cautionary tale: “Did you sell your soul again?” they ask over a drifting underwater melody. Did Corry fade into the corporate world? Get stuck scrolling? Pencil-pusher purgatory? If Corry is taking L’s, the album closes like a team down 3–2 but still believing. “The Best Song in the World” delivers a simple melody and one last honest gesture: “If I should disappear, if nothing else worked, at least you’d have this song.” Instead of worrying about legacy, Josh pulls something real out of the bag: “Raise a glass for me, my friend, and find the song I’ve always been.” It’s a toast to love, friendship, and making something that matters.
From the Afro-bassline of “Free My Mind” to the meditative “As I Walk Along,” JR JR guide us through shedding distraction and embracing what’s always been. Sonically and lyrically, it’s quasi-spiritual: “Teach my hands respect for all the things that you have made / Make my ears sharpen to hear your voice.” The standout “House Beside” pairs humor with a longing to borrow cultural immortality—“I wanna buy that house beside the one next to the place where Prince grew up in”—before settling into the realer truth: “I wanna buy that house beside the one next to the place where we’re together, we’re together.”
The album echoes the generational reflection found in Vampire Weekend’s Modern Vampires of the City, but with hope instead of haunting. Where that album wrestled with mortality, JR JR wrestled with presence—learning to embrace the world around them. Both albums shine by refining their best elements and pairing them with an important moment.
Back to the Land is JR JR’s most coherent album to date—their best since 2015’s JR JR and tighter than 2019’s Invocations / Conversations. It plays to their strengths: subtle psychedelia, multi-rhythmic beats, close harmonies, vocals gliding over controlled chaos. Combined with their strongest songwriting yet, it’s a must-listen.
PLAYER COMP: GIANNIS ANTETOKOUNMPO – Veterans who started with jokey personas but have evolved into grounded philosophers, quietly adding to their bag.