Junior Boys
For All The Lights To Dance In Are So Chosen
Sep 1, 2009
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Words by Sean Moeller // Illustration by Johnnie Cluney // Sound engineering by Mike Gentry
A lot of electronic music makes me feel, as it likely makes you - dear reader/listener - feel like we understand why other people would enjoy moving and responding to it, but oh, hell no, not us. It's danceable music for other people - for the wildly wacky or the loud personalities that are going to be taking the really fucked up drugs, wearing the killer-est new styles and showing off a face of stock indifference even still, even STILL with all of that vague dancing and the jerking lights going off all around. It's the danceable music that we'd be better off doing without, or so we'd make the argument to our inner stoics and 'fraidy cat. Jeremy Greenspan and Matt Didemus of Canadian group Junior Boys make the kind of electronic music for we, the people unfit for that other stuff. They grab us softly by the wrists and glide us out onto the floor as if we were on rollers and caught up in some kind of tailwind that was gently affecting our stance to remain stationary and just get a respectable buzz on, moving us slowly out into the night of abandonment, into an evening that won't likely get us into any form of trouble that couldn't be corrected or blotched out. It feels like it was our idea, everything that's moving, everything that getting shirtless or sweaty, everything that's starting to express itself in gyration or bobbing - all actions that don't usually agree with us. It's as if we've been inflated with something that could be sexiness or an appeal to it and it's gone ahead and started taking all of our calls or ignoring them. We're squiggling and getting sly on our feet, moving slowly to beats and melodies that were the reason that television programs of the 1980s have theme songs that we still like to sing, sometimes for reasons unbeknownst to us, from the deepest parts of our lungs, out the open windows of the cars we're passing in. Greenspan sounds like he's Barry Manilow-ing us, giving us good, healthy glimpses of a bushy tract of chest hair, licking the corners of a thick mustache that he doesn't have and offering seductive come hithers to the chosen ladies the words are meant to work on, to get them closer to a bed just begging to be bounced on, or given over to a long, reflective chat about everything and nothing. "Begone Dull Care," the group's newest album is this forward, yet bashful prelude to any of those activities, setting the moment for the heated exchanges and whatever else decides to transpire from there on. The music is easy-going, almost timid, but Greenspan makes no bones about what he's looking for, or more so, where he's most comfortable and that's in the dimmed down lighting that we eat expensive meals under, with old, old arrangements of ancient standards making a dalliance with the musky air. It's a high society dance show, where all of the intentions are still known, just speckled with more hints and suave regards. Greenspan sings about the lights and how they move, how they paint the times of the night - how they help. He maintains, "I see you better when the lights are out," and that can only mean one thing, or a thousand things. It's no good narrowing it down. Where's the fun in that? He sees them "dancing with the lights," whomever gets the call or the tap, and it's romantic. It really does seem romantic so we're with them, meeting them out in the gray light in hopes that it turns yellow and red at some point.
Junior Boys Official Site
Domino Records
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