Artist: Junior Boys
Album: Begone Dull Care
Year: 2009
Grade: 2.5 pretzels
Junior Boys were the band that made me appreciate electro (or “electropop” or “indietronica” or whatever the hell you want to call it). Their album So This Is Goodbye, from 2006, wormed its way into my brain and hasn’t really left since. That album was great because it presented electro as something more than beeps and shit. The songs were carefully crafted, adding and subtracting layers of synths and beats to create a silky, warm mood. Best of all was Jeremy Greenspan’s incredible vocal delivery, which felt like he was practically whispering in your ear. It all added up to an incredibly lush, seductive album which took electro to new heights in my mind.
Begone Dull Care really does try to replicate that success. It wants to have the same sensuous appeal of its predecessor. However, where So This Is Goodbye felt natural and elegant, this album feels forced and slightly formulaic. The songs sound gorgeous, but repeated listening shows that there’s very little underneath that surface beauty. The opening track, “Parallel Lines”, is casually enjoyable but never really goes to that next level. “Work” has lots of moody synth doodles jagging through it, but it feels underwritten and becomes boring after a few minutes. The atmosphere is there, but not the substance.
Making matters worse, there are a few very odd artistic choices on this album. “Bits And Pieces” has a beat that seems to feature someone burping on every fourth beat. "Dull To Pause" has some incredibly awkward and distracting lyrics (“it’s just too dull to care, so we cue from another mirror”). Even the album cover seems strangely blank and lifeless. For a group like Junior Boys, who rely so heavily on setting the mood, little details like this seem jarring and end up detracting from the album overall.
What this album really needs is a big, standout song, on par with Goodbye’s “In The Morning”. Junior Boys’ albums are very emotional and they need a climactic song to release some of that emotion and tension. On Begone Dull Care, that moment never comes. The album’s centerpiece, “Hazel”, is definitely intended to fill that spot, but, just like the other songs, it never seems to leave second gear. It’s a fun song to dance to, with big keyboard fills and cooing vocals, but it needs to be about twice as big and four times as sexy to really get the job done. The same can be said of the album as a whole. Although I’m glad it shows Junior Boys continuing to record in the style that made me like them, they’ve already recorded better albums. Why would I listen to a poor copy when I can go hear So This Is Goodbye again?
Begone Dull Care really does try to replicate that success. It wants to have the same sensuous appeal of its predecessor. However, where So This Is Goodbye felt natural and elegant, this album feels forced and slightly formulaic. The songs sound gorgeous, but repeated listening shows that there’s very little underneath that surface beauty. The opening track, “Parallel Lines”, is casually enjoyable but never really goes to that next level. “Work” has lots of moody synth doodles jagging through it, but it feels underwritten and becomes boring after a few minutes. The atmosphere is there, but not the substance.
Making matters worse, there are a few very odd artistic choices on this album. “Bits And Pieces” has a beat that seems to feature someone burping on every fourth beat. "Dull To Pause" has some incredibly awkward and distracting lyrics (“it’s just too dull to care, so we cue from another mirror”). Even the album cover seems strangely blank and lifeless. For a group like Junior Boys, who rely so heavily on setting the mood, little details like this seem jarring and end up detracting from the album overall.
What this album really needs is a big, standout song, on par with Goodbye’s “In The Morning”. Junior Boys’ albums are very emotional and they need a climactic song to release some of that emotion and tension. On Begone Dull Care, that moment never comes. The album’s centerpiece, “Hazel”, is definitely intended to fill that spot, but, just like the other songs, it never seems to leave second gear. It’s a fun song to dance to, with big keyboard fills and cooing vocals, but it needs to be about twice as big and four times as sexy to really get the job done. The same can be said of the album as a whole. Although I’m glad it shows Junior Boys continuing to record in the style that made me like them, they’ve already recorded better albums. Why would I listen to a poor copy when I can go hear So This Is Goodbye again?
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