AFTERNOON BIKE RIDE

Running with Scissors
(Friends of Friends)
Add date: 9.23.2025
Release date: 9.19.2025




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Afternoon Bike Ride is an eclectic indie trio based in Montreal composed of Lia Kurihara, Éloi Le Blanc-Ringuette and David Tanton. It’s an audio diary of what they know will be their most cherished memories. They’ve released a series of cohesive projects where field recordings blend with ambient, folk, and pop including their 2021 EP Skipping Stones, their self-titled debut LP of the same year, and their acclaimed 2023 LP Glossover. The three musicians work more and more tightly as a trio with each offering, splitting roles on guitar, vocals, percussion, and even mixing English and French. Their collaboration has led them into multiple US and Canadian tours including performances at Montreal’s JazzFest, Guelph’s JazzFest, Pop! Montreal, M for Montreal, and opening for one of the biggest names in folk, Novo Amor, at MTelus in Montreal and History in Toronto. 

Their third record, titled Running With Scissors, is a poignant, genre-blurring exploration of life’s most tender and tumultuous moments. Across the twelve tracks, raw, emotional acoustic elements are fused with subtle electronic layers and indie rock grunge, creating a textured blend that feels as vast and intimate as the album’s themes. It’s an immersive record that shifts perspectives, from the micro to the macro, zooming out to explore the universe and zooming in on the personal experiences that define their lives. 

Beneath the album’s existential musings lies an even more intimate anchor: Lia’s role as a caregiver for her father, who lives with dementia. Though for the last four years she’s dedicated much of her time outside of music to her dad’s needs, she’s also brought him into the band’s daily routine. He spent a 5 week writing retreat with them that resulted in their second album and he attended nearly all of their practices while building their first live show. Unfortunately, he has significantly declined since then. 

This reality seeps into the cracks of Running with Scissors, particularly in the title track, where the act of "running" mirrors the frantic, Sisyphean effort to preserve memories that slip like sand. The scissors—sharp, precarious—become a metaphor for the duality of love and loss: the careful tenderness of holding someone’s fading story, and the guilt of wondering if you’re cutting away parts of yourself in the process. The album doesn’t just explore grief in the abstract; it documents the daily ache of watching a loved one dissolve, while still grasping for the fleeting moments of recognition. At its core, Running with Scissors is about navigating the chaos of existence with open hands—sometimes catching, sometimes fumbling, but always feeling deeply.