Junior Boys – Begone Dull Care

2009 welcomes the return of Jeremy Greenspan and Matt Didemus, more commonly known as Canadian dance act Junior Boys. Three years have passed since their last release, the critically acclaimed So This Is Goodbye. But can Junior Boys replicate their past success on their latest album?

Begone Dull Care fizzes into life with ‘Parallel Lines’, a slow meandering track which matches the traditionally light vocal of Greenspan with a cute, yet calculated synth pattern before the end of the track ebbs into ‘Work’ and the pace of the album makes an effort to pick-up, albeit ever so slightly. Next up is ‘Bits & Pieces’, and whilst this is amongst the most upbeat tracks out of the eight on this record, it’s still highly unlikely that you’ll hear this doing the rounds on the indie dance floor with songs from fellow dance pioneers Justice, Simian Mobile Disco or Hercules & Love Affair (for example).

The pace is maintained at the midpoint of the record, and ‘Dull To Pause’ is the first time that the lyrics really match well with the ambience of the track, offering a sense of urgency offset by a calmer veneer through some sharp rhyming couplets: “With every morning chore/you look around once more/so that your eyes will adjust/to all the grain and dust”.

It’s clear at this point in the record that Greenspan and Didemus’ modus operandi becomes clearer; long gone are the raw bleep-beats from tracks on the previous record, seen on ‘Like A Child’ and ‘In The Morning’, replaced with a softer, more understated feel. The production values have been vastly improved, meaning Begone Dull Care is a more polished finish than anything Junior Boys have released before, and several of the tracks are cleverly weaved into one another.

Lead single ‘Hazel’, and to a lesser extent, ‘The Animator’ are realistically the only two tracks aiming to prevent the tail end of the record from petering out, leaving the listener with a slight sense of disorientation between the alternate styles. Whilst there isn’t a bad track out of the eight on this record, there is a sense that neither end of the spectrum of moods covered seems fully willing to accommodate the other, leaving almost a disjointed feel.

What is often prevalent in this album and in the previous two from Junior Boys is that songs are peppered with lyrics which can be deliberately vague, which leads to the problem that it can be difficult to pick up on a narrative throughout; whilst in some aspects this is good (the listener is to an extent forced to derive a meaning that they can connect with) the overriding risk is that for a casual listener, large chunks of the record can almost wash away like sandcastles at high tide.

Begone Dull Care is not an album which strikes with its immediacy; but the rewards are definitely there for those prepared to invest some time in it. Whilst it isn’t quite the life-affirming follow up to So This Is Goodbye that some hoped for, this is a record which can combat the stresses of modern life, if only for roughly three-quarters of an hour.