“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.”