19 June 2007
Junior Boys - “So This Is Goodbye” Review
The Junior Boys--masters at conjuring emotion and sensuality out of exceedingly sterile electronics---- have released their second full-lenth, “So This Is Goodbye”. Their prior work, “Last Exit”, possessed a haunting beauty despite its simplicity; here, too, amidst the beeps and blits of an NES-inspired afterlife, caught between Jeremy Greenspan’s chalky lyricism and the undeniable barrenness of the whole affair, there is something surprisingly sexy, something almost disturbingly human. It’s almost as if the decidedly retro technology reminds one of their own soulfulness.
This time around, the Boys have lost their “stutter effect”--originally pioneered by BT and brought to the masses by Timbaland--and moved on to more traditional, song-structured work. The vocal scales are more eerie and unsettling now-- singer Greenspan’s high(ish) voice is stark, often distressing, and unbelievably compelling. On “In the Morning”, his words are inflected with pop sensibility and injected between heavily-saturated analog leads, while “When No One Cares” could almost have been the darker, grittier candidate for a James Bond movie theme-- think Sinatra on downers.
I can’t figure out if this is the soundtrack to an 80s sci-fi movie, a psychological thriller, or porn. Whatever the case may be, it’s truly distinctive, thoroughly modern music. “Count Souvenirs” and title track “So This Is Goodbye” are incredibly cinematic, and perhaps the most beautiful on the album--there is, again, such a deep sense of feeling despite the absence of most things recognizably human. The former’s jazzy, almost crooning vocals, startlingly reminiscent of 60s lounge music, are especially notable, as are the Carribean-flavored, Aphex Twin-inspired electronics of “Caught in a Wave”--showing once again that the Junior Boys are anything but predictable.
“So This is Goodbye” runs 49 minutes.
My Rating: 7 out of 10.
