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Rewired and inspiredWith their third album, Begone Dull Care,
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by JACK OATMON Like writing about thought or singing about music, the third outing from electronic duo Junior Boys is a self-reflexive examination of the creative process as a vocation and an ode to the artistic epiphany. Compared to past albums, which focused largely on the personal, emotional experience, Begone Dull Care is looser and more easy-going in its pacing and construction, yet less whimsical and trivial in the sense that it delves into more intricate concepts. Musically the album eases into gear with dreamy down-tempo techno beats, soft, echoed crooning and bubbly, hissing analog synthesizers. It then builds up to a funky, playful crescendo of catchy, lullaby-like synthpop detailed with sparse digital percussion and ethereal keyboard hooks. The net effect is a record that is bright, thoughtful and moody without feeling pretentious or didactic. Though the songs are, stylistically, still turbulent and emotional ballads, they do not speak of love and longing for a person but rather the love of catharsis and the endless hunt for inspiration. “There are songs about some of the challenges to having to do creative work, then there a lot of songs about the joys of doing that creative work,” explains Jeremy Greenspan who, along with Matthew Didemus, forms the Hamilton, Ontario duo. “There are songs about the creative moment as well, and those tend to be filtered through Norman McLaren.” CanCon cuesFilmmaker McLaren serves as a creative muse for Begone Dull Care, and his National Film Board animated short of the same title, featuring music by the Oscar Peterson Trio, is a central influence on the album. “He sort of became a figure that I could throw ideas off of,” Greenspan continues. “I felt a kinship with him. I felt that he’s a perfect artist or something like that. So the album is about that process of making creative work.” The title also includes the word “begone” partly in order to acknowledge casting away the insecurities that can restrict young artists from tapping into their natural creative energy. “It refers to the idea of being too careful and too precious about the music you’re making. Or having some sort of prescribed notion of what you do or what your music’s going to sound like. The joy of making music is hopefully having a song or idea present itself without you thinking about it too much.” This desire to allow ideas to form organically translates into a more raw, gradual aspect to the new material. “That’s definitely what we’re going for. That’s why we decided to make the songs longer, so the ideas unfold in a natural way. We didn’t go for any heavy sheen. We wanted all the buzzing and weird sounds to be there. We wanted the process of making the record to be somehow audible in the songs themselves.” This attitude led Greenspan and Didemus to prefer hardware production to digital in many cases, and to mix the album to preserve sonic details in the way that an original painting reveals the artist’s brushstrokes—“and part of that has to do with the choices we make technologically. We don’t work exclusively on a computer, where a lot of that ‘brushstrokes’ idea is glossed over.” The duo wanted to avoid the tendency to allow the polish and catchiness of modern pop music to dominate their aesthetic and become the point of the music. “We live in a culture where what’s celebrated in music is how loud it is or how clean it is, how immediate it is. We wanted to make an album that wasn’t immediately banging you over the head with its hooks or its ability to be turned into a ringtone. It’s purposefully longer and softer and quieter. Particularly our mastering, which is considerably quieter than what usually goes on.” Boys to menJunior Boys got their start not by building a hometown audience in Hamilton and moving along to wider appeal, but rather by building up a fan base online. That may not sound particularly noteworthy in this age of MySpace, but when Greenspan and former partner Johnny Dark were producing songs for online distribution in the late ’90s, there wasn’t much infrastructure around for such things. They posted experimental tracks on mp3.com and, later, the first full-fledged Junior Boys songs were released in 2001 on Kode9’s then-website, now-record label Hyperdub. By that time, Johnny Dark had left to pursue personal projects, while Greenspan began working on songs with sound engineer Matt Didemus. Their first formally released EP, 2003’s Birthday/Last Exit, and follow up LP, 2004’s Last Exit, grabbed attention with their subdued, tasteful cross-pollination of club house and catchy new wave. But even in the early work, Greenspan’s vocal aspirations are apparent, and his crooner style would later lead him to cover Frank Sinatra’s “When No One Cares” and develop a more poppy, lyrical approach on the second LP, So This is Goodbye, which was widely critically noted and nominated for the 2007 Polaris Prize. A decade deep into the Junior Boys’ remarkable amalgamation of pop, techno, crooner jazz and new wave, Begone Dull Care also establishes a trajectory for future projects. “I knew it was going to be a transitional record, going from where we were to perhaps something completely different that we might go for next. I wanted to take stock of where we were, so thematically it’s very much about that, and the idea of going from people who are making records to suddenly being thrust into this notion of having a career.” In that sense, Begone Dull Care marks the Junior Boys’ artistic coming of age, expressing the distance they’ve travelled since their inception, hence the thematic preoccupation with process and development. “You make a first record and you’re thrilled that you’re actually doing it at all. You make a second one and you’re confused that someone let you do it again. And by the third album, you’re confronted by the notion that this is what you do.” This realization also led them to a self-aware, appreciative tone in their work that celebrates their fortune in being able to pursue creative careers while remaining mindful of the fleeting nature of a thriving, artistic lifestyle. “You’re concerned with the process because, first of all, you don’t want to become comfortable in your role as a professional musician. Doing music is the kind of thing that can go away at any time. You have to be aware of that and you have to take note of it. It’s not a career. You’re not a plumber. There’s no certificate. You really shouldn’t have any sense of entitlement to it at all.” Twice removedThough he has covered Frank Sinatra vocally and this album takes cues from an Oscar Peterson-scored film, Greenspan holds that his interest in jazz is more about its influence on pop than about jazz itself. “I’m not a jazz nut in the sense that I’m not particularly well versed in it in the way a lot of people are. But I do tend to listen to pop and rock music that is jazz-influenced. Bands like Steely Dan, coming from a jazz place. So I guess I’d be a third-generation jazz fan.” This secondary exposure is also the way Greenspan draws from many of his other major influences. “That’s how I got into new wave music—because I grew up listening to dance music. I’m not old enough to have gone through early-’80s dance and synth music. I was listening to dance music and techno and house. But the people who were making that would have been listening to Kraftwerk and Japan and all that kind of stuff.” The generation process that informs the Junior Boys begs the question of what young fans of their music draw from the duo’s albums, though Greenspan finds it difficult to speculate. “I never know anything about who listens to our music or what demographic it appeals to. I think that’s another thing about making this record. I’m just turning thirty and for the first time in my life I really have no idea what teenagers listen to. You start to have that question as to whether you’re part of youth culture anymore.” WITH MAX TUNDRA AT LE NATIONAL |
