CD: Junior Boys, Last Exit

(Kin)

Over the past 12 months, Canadian trio Junior Boys have generated more purple prose on internet blogs than anybody except Dizzee Rascal, but they couldn't be more different. While Dizzee's innovations thwack the listener over the head, the quietly radical music on Last Exit hovers around the edges of your eardrums.

By yoking lonely vocals and shivery synthesizers to intricate, skeletal beats, Junior Boys variously suggest Talk Talk produced by Timbaland, Hall & Oates having a panic attack and a very sleepy Underworld.

In different hands, some of the songs might be butterscotch-smooth MOR but Jeremy Greenspan's voice never loses its neurotic edge. When I'm Not Around is a deep-freeze version of 1980s boudoir soul, with a desolate saxophone that sounds as if it got lost en route to a Sade album and wants to go home. Junior Boys' spectral vision of electronic pop is an understated, unpredictable delight.

Contributor

Dorian Lynskey

The GuardianTramp

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