(t5!) Heroes Of The Zeroes Albums: #12: Junior Boys – So This Is Goodbye (2006)

The zeroes revision of dance-based pop music, the one built for computer speakers and Sennheiser headphones, is always attached with arctic adjective, described by a number of variations of the word “cold”. In 2004, Junior Boys were living up to the iciness of the era, giving all the other knob-tweaking, laptop producers the shivers. Along with the wicked cold beats, Jeremy Greenspan proved that he knows how to auction off his melancholy and bruised soul, selling his heartbreaks like he’s Ron Popeil selling the chop-o-matic.

When 2006 rolled through, Junior Boys underwent a change in personnel. Johnny Dark, who people considered as the mastermind behind the beats, left Greenspan all by himself. Greenspan has mentioned before that it’s actually difficult to pinpoint who’s responsible for what, but one listen to their sophomore album, So This Is Goodbye, and it’s pretty obvious. For instance, the sturdy stuttering beats that was a staple of Last Exit has left town along with Dark. Greenspan enlisted former engineer Matthew Didemus to bathe their offerings with space and silence, making the album exist and operate in air.

Junior Boys’ soundscapes in So This Is Goodbye sound so thin that you can almost hear Greenspan whimper in between the blips and clicks. As a matter of fact, one of the most noticeable alterations is how he positions himself in the front, and Junior Boys’ new found dependency on his singing results in a new stress on melody. Where Last Exit was showcasing the “dance” side of dance pop—with its proneness to surround songs around Dark’s staccato beats—So This Is Goodbye is saying that it’s a futuristic pop record first and foremost, a stylish, capacious assemblage of glacial R&B, frozen disco, and thanks to the “When No One Cares”, and electronic post-zeroes jazz songs that an intergalactic Fred Astaire and android Ginger Roberts can foxtrot to in the near future.

While their musical structure may have been subjected to a slight remodeling, the turmoil develops in the same old settings, at least lyrically. So This Is Goodbye is an explanation to the difficulties of keeping love afloat. Greenspan sure didn’t make it easy to decipher—the language and arrangement of words are randomized and saturated with hazy imagery and vague partly shaped figures. Maybe it’s a guy being uncertain—he has some idea why everyone has broken his heart, but he’s still trying to recall in his mind the order of what has happened. Or maybe it’s a guy with his pride wounded and, thus, still in shock, sort of like a wrecked man trying to recollect the correct sequence of what happened before a car accident. Or maybe it’s a guy trying to protect himself by keeping certain words and feelings hidden. I don’t know.

With that said, these boys from Hamilton still know to get down. The proof is in the pudding: “The Equalizer” is a runaway train of funk, relentless with its rippling synths, exhilarating handclaps, and tickling melodic clicks. “Like A Child” initializes like it just sucked you in through a variegated vortex as jouncing bass tones and scattered hi-hats zoom on by. And, of course, there’s “In The Morning”, an obvious choice for the album’s lead single. With muscled beats and sparkling melodies, the duo enlivens the gloom from Greenspan’s plea to prolong a frayed intimacy. Sometimes, the best remedy for saying goodbye to someone is to have a night out of hearing compelling dance music, even if you don’t feel like dancing.