Sunday Junkie: “Fever Dream”

At some point you just gotta release the album, right? Worcester’s Sunday Junkie has been regularly releasing singles, including the latest “Fever Dream,” since at least October.

Here’s the schedule so far:

10/2024: “Vultures”

11/2024: “Haunted Head”

2/2025: “Holy Holy”

3/2025: “Sister”

4/2025: “Fever Dream”

By my count, that’s enough for an EP already. Maybe it’s all adding up to a LP, but is the intention to slowdrip the singles in order to milk local promotional networks to the maximum extent before dropping the full album?

There’s a certain logic to the approach. Music consumption is, in many ways, geared toward singles rather than albums. Singles can land on playlists on the streaming platforms. Albums just sort of live and die on their own.

Releasing singles can function as a kind of market testing too. If one of the tracks really gets no traction, I suppose you could leave it off the album.

And parts of the calendar in which the music would receive less attention (like December and January, when a lot of outlets are in “Best of” mode, or recovering from the holidays) can be avoided altogether.

Of course, one drawback is that by the time the album comes out, most outlets that would have been interested in reviewing it have already heard all the tracks. They may not want to wade back into retread territory. But if you’ve already gotten the coverage you wanted out of those outlets with the singles, maybe it doesn’t matter?

Stream, share, buy to your heart’s content.

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