Bob Moses’ New Album Is About Growing Up: ‘We Started As Kids, and Now We Both Have Kids’

Bob Moses are searching for thing fewer get to achieve: a lifelong vocation successful music.

That mightiness not person seemed evident erstwhile the Vancouver-born physics duo of Jimmy Vallance and Tom Howie were igniting dance floors astatine Brooklyn raves successful the aboriginal 2010s. Now, they’re reasoning a batch astir what it means to beryllium an adult.

“We started arsenic kids, and present we some person caller kids, truthful that gives america an absorbing snapshot connected the passing of time. There’s tons to look backmost on,” says Howie earlier the intimate Billboard Canada LIVE Q&A and show astatine the W Toronto astatine the extremity of September. “We’ve had these highs that we utilized to imagination about, but there’s inactive this constituent of feeling the aforesaid arsenic we did erstwhile we were 16 successful our bedrooms archetypal wanting to marque music.”

The pair’s debut album, 2015’s Days Gone By and 2018 followup Battle Lines were some illustration successes connected Billboard’s Top Dance/Electronic Albums chart, portion “Love Brand New” spent 12 weeks connected Hot Rock & Alternative Songs. They’ve received Grammy and Juno nominations and played imagination shows astatine Red Rocks successful Colorado and festivals astir the world.

Bob Moses’ caller album Blink is retired Friday (Oct. 17) connected AWAL, and singles including “Time of Your Life” are already hits connected the Billboard Canada Airplay charts.

But there’s inactive thing they’re trying to grasp: the elusive nostalgic precocious you get arsenic a young creator starting out, erstwhile the satellite is inactive wide open.

“There’s an absorbing headspace that comes from the feeling that you person each these highs and lows successful life, but you don’t truly consciousness similar you tin bent connected to them successful immoderate existent mode oregon similar they’re needfully yours. You benignant of conscionable blink and they’re gone,” Howie says. “That’s the thought that we wrestled with a batch connected this album, approaching that thought of the ephemeral quality of life. You person to conscionable beryllium contiguous for the travel and possibly that’s the champion we tin do.”

Collaborating is simply a deliberate enactment for some of them. They unrecorded connected other sides of the country, Vallance successful New York and Howie successful Los Angeles. They recorded Blink in Toronto and Vancouver, often penning pieces of euphony solo and past leaving it for the different to soma out. But being unneurotic successful Vancouver helped them retrieve their aboriginal days.

Howie and Vallance archetypal met arsenic teenagers successful creation people successful the city. They weren’t friends close distant — Howie was a twelvemonth older, and they had antithetic person groups. They some started successful punk and stone bands, but they had antithetic interests erstwhile it came to music.

“I had gone singer-songwriter and Jimmy was successful afloat trance mode,” Howie says. “We were benignant of connected other ends of the energetic spectrum.”

But they recognized thing successful each other: a tendency to instrumentality euphony seriously, not conscionable arsenic a hobby, but arsenic everything.

When they met backmost up years aboriginal successful New York, that tone drew them backmost unneurotic to commencement collaborating. Something clicked successful them, and their premix of physics and stone influences blended into what we present cognize arsenic Bob Moses’ signature sound.

Though their euphony is often filed nether the electron...