Electronic-music pundits are buzzing about the Return of the Song. You doubt? Open your ears, Poindexter. The Postal Service’s rousing commercial success; microhouse maestros Matthew Dear and Jake Fairley crooning onstage; loads of top minimal tech-house and schaffel artists employing singers. These and other alarming developments demonstrate the ascent of vocal-centric selectronica. True, much of it is feeble–merely soggy bedroom indie rock transferred to the digital realm. But a fair percentage of it is genuinely inspired.
Hamilton, Canada’s Junior Boys are one of the brighter sparks to emerge from this trend. Their early EPs (Birthday and High Come Down) generated a deafening groundswell of kudos in the blogosphere and the I Love Music Internet discussion list. These scribblers and chatterers’ enthusiasm for Junior Boys strikes this scribbler and chatterer as slightly hyperbolic, but there’s no denying that the duo’s debut full-length, Last Exit (Domino/Kin), radiates a special aura.
Junior Boys’ music is for people who are benumbed by meds or stunned by disastrous personal relationships. Zach Braff should’ve tapped Junior Boys to soundtrack Garden State. Main JB songwriter Jeremy Greenspan sings as if his roommate is writing his PhD thesis in the next room; he emanates a sweet sadness while barely leaving a trace of saliva on the mic screen. Greenspan’s voice resembles Graham Gouldman’s in 10cc’s “I’m Not in Love” or avant-disco genius Arthur Russell’s; his delivery’s marked by a chilled hush with an undercurrent of glamour. This understatement weaves all the way through Last Exit.
What separates Junior Boys from the Postal Services, Múms, and Album Leafs of this world are their precisely programmed rococo rhythms. Greenspan and engineer Matthew Didemus show an appreciation for the jittery beat trickery of Timbaland and Akufen, which lifts Junior Boys’ songs above the drudgery besetting most other electronic-pop outfits. Sure, you could call Last Exit emotronica, but the emo’s muted and much easier to tolerate than that promulgated by cleanly scrubbed rock kids with faux-hawks. Even “Birthday,” which recalls Naked Eyes’ 1983 cover of Bacharach/David’s “(There’s) Always Something There to Remind Me,” charm.
But more often Junior Boys’ mellowly morose ballads drip with ennui and ooze bruised glamour; think of them as the Pet Shop Boys for people whose shelves groan with Kranky and Mille Plateaux CDs. This is suburban Canadian soul, aptly icy and frictionless, somewhat like listening to New Order and OMD while underwater. You may shed literally one tear while listening to Junior Boys. But that tear will carry more weight than all of those squeezed out by whichever bands are selling like hotcakes in Sam Goody. DAVE SEGAL
With Mouse on Mars and Ratatat. Fri Oct 1 at Chop Suey, 1325 E Madison St, 324-8000, 9 pm-2 am, $12, 21+.
