Junior Boys: Begone Dull Care

When the words electro and pop go together, it almost sounds too childish to take seriously and you'd even be fooled into thinking that with a name like Junior Boys, that the electro-pop band in question are themselves a little childish but surprisingly, this album proves both of those assumptions wrong.

Begone Dull Care starts with Parallel Lines, a twitchy, modulated song with no danceability what-so-ever and an oddly mature rhythm. It bounces along on blips and bleeps that sound as if they've been cut directly out of any Atari game you've ever played from the 1980's onwards. Sitting at a surprising six and a half minutes in length; this is anything but the three minute slices of pop we were expecting.



Not all of the songs are as brooding as the aforementioned introductory track and whilst they do tend to up the joviality factor quite a bit throughout the rest of the record; it's still a lot more coherent than we thought. Bits And Pieces is a wonderfully enjoyable foray into catchy electronica and sits well as a summer record to remember. It dips and dives between light and dark with its rhythmic structuring and would do better to sit still instead of fidgeting around but overall its a thoroughly enjoyable track that sits on the acceptable side of the accessibility fence.

There's a definite want to appeal knitted into the record and a few tracks suffer because of it. Hazel is completely inoffensive and obviously well-crafted but the vocals annoy more than they should and detract from the clever musicianship in the background. It's odd to see such poppy theatrics surrounded by such reserved creativity, especially considering it sits just before the fantastically laid back Sneak A Picture. A warped intro leads into an organic electro-beat that's been drenched in the hot sun for just the right amount of time. It's inventive, fresh, wonderfully old-school and one of the most enjoyable tracks on the record.

There's a lot to enjoy from a record like Begone Dull Care but there's a definite feeling that Junior Boys have a lot more to offer than what's on display here. Whilst each track never grows tiresome and has enough musical ingenuity to keep it's self a-float; there's still something lacking from the overall package. Maybe it's the fact that there's too much swapping around of ideals or maybe it's the constant feeling that we've been here before in some form or another but luckily its just acceptable enough to never truly get in the way of the music.

If they kept focus on their deeper, darker intentions then this record would've been a true under-the-radar gem. As it stands, it is instead a surprisingly impressive collection of songs that show heaps of future promise and on offer, a few truly great spectacles of a genre that we thought had fallen a little flat.