Shabason, Krgovich & Harris has been played on NTS shows including After Dark w/ HELM, with Friday Afternoon first played on 15 August 2020.

Contrasting the forced trend of remote collaborations, Philadelphia was recorded across three days of sessions in Toronto, pre-COVID. “Somewhere back in 2018 we started to pass demos back and forth over email and we quickly got about eight song sketches together,” explains Shabason. “Then in fall of 2019 we all realised that if we didn’t get into the same room together we were never gonna finish this album.” The trio’s physical proximity while recording underwrites the hushed tones that pervade the album, which itself reads like the kind of quiet, personal conversation that can only happen in close quarters lest it be washed away in the din of public life. Philadelphia establishes this immediately with “Osouji”, a track whose gentle intro of balmy synth and crickets suggests a sunrise and sunset equally. Bathed in calm light, Krgovich sets a scene not unfamiliar in this day and age: “Garden pebbles underfoot / the wet bamboo / been inside all the day / deep cleaning room to room.” Krgovich wrote the album’s lyrics under the self-imposed philosophy of “first thought, best thought” admittedly avoiding the well-trodden subjects of romance, love, and heartbreak. He chooses instead to reveal the romanticism of the world hidden in plain sight while Harris and Shabason deepen the sentiment with reflective, instrumental excursions. Whispered, conversational synthesizers fill out “Tuesday Afternoon” over a backdrop of birdsong, and vocals make only brief appearances near the track’s beginning and end. Conversely, “Friday Afternoon” is lyrically driven, and delivers an anthemic refrain that constitutes one of the most emotional moments of Philadelphia. After a postcard-like recounting of seeing a roadside stranger experience car trouble, Krgovich repeats the hushed mantra “wrap your loving arms around it”, almost as a call-to-action for embracing the present moment as it is instead of as it ought to be. “I Don’t See the Moon” is a lighter mood by comparison. With its jazz-tinged interplay of piano and guitar, complete with a gliding electric bass line, the song provides levity, but is no less introspective than the rest of the collection. “Waltz” serves similar ends without much interjection from the drums-- the beat is instead implied by the rhythm of Krgovich’s vocals that bear a subtle smooth RnB influence as he paints a picture of his residential surroundings: “and all the cactus gardens growing right on through the fences / and the flowers over high walls / and the houses all the way / down, down, down.”