Junior Boys - Begone Dull Care

http://www.dominorecordco.com/uk/news

http://stereogum.com/archives/new-junior-boys-parallel-lines-stereogum-premiere_049312.html

Begone Dull Care is out 3/24 in Canada and 4/7 in the US via Domino. Before that, you'll be able to nab the 12"/digital single of "Hazel."

****Domino Records UK says the UK release on 11th May 2009?

so i'm not sure which date is correct. nothing to take away from the other thread but this album deserves its own thread.

IT HAS LEAKED

getting now!

sounds even more streamlined than 'so this is goodbye'...5 tracks in and it's good, but definitely a multiple-listens kinda album, imo

streamlined?

http://www.pullbuoy.co.uk/grab-5.jpg

From "Bits and Pieces" onwards I'm in love - not so sure about "Work" yet.

"Dull to Pause" is a beaut!!

when is "hazel" out? (on 12")

definitely a multiple-listens kinda album, imo

really hope so as after one listen i can't remember ANY of it :/

yeah i think this really starts to kick in w/ "bits & pieces"

i think my fav bit right now is the last minute or so of "hazel"

it's funny because "Work" was the song that stood out on the first listen.

i think i'm going to really like this album.

Could someone please explain me what's so different and appealing about this particular band? Because whatever everyone else is hearing I dont.

Anyone doubting "Work" is insane

Dull To Pause is lovely, there's a strange sort of... digital country feel to it.

good album for when you wanna http://i32.tinypic.com/2ro2t5s.jpg

Hazel is the one they played when I saw them play a Portuguese festival - they're definitely getting a bit livelier.

I really love the squelchy noises on The Animator as well, it's reminds me of Orbital's Adnans.

"Work" - I'd like a 2x12" pack with Carl Craig, Brendan Moeller, Mungolian Jet Set & Lindstrøm remixes pretty please.

Good to hear there is new stuff coming up. Their last album was much better than the debut, so hopefully this is another leap forward.

Really like The Animator, but so far the rest of the new album sounds really shallow. Forgettable. Which is not my experience with Junior Boys.

Yeah, I've listened to this two and a half times, and I'm hoping I warm up to it, because it's not really doing anything for me yet. I like the songs Greenspan sings on the Morgan Geist album better than most of what's on here.

X cellent

LBI, jaymc - that was my response after playing it once, too. Album really only starts to reveal itself upon repeated listening.

N1ck Str@k3r B@nd sample in "Bits and Pieces"?

"Work" - I'd like a 2x12" pack with Carl Craig[...] remixes pretty please.

it already sounds like a carl craig remix of a JB's track!

So far, it sounds fantastic!

it already sounds like a carl craig remix of a JB's track!

maybe they set out to make something like the "like a child" remix themselves in the first place?

N1ck Str@k3r B@nd sample in "Bits and Pieces"?

― Andy K, Monday, February 2, 2009 10:25 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yes -- theres also a really really obvious sample used in 'what its for' that i cant place for the life of me -- some like smooth r&b joint, that little once-per-bar guitar thing happening in the background -- driving me craaazy. i can hear a woman singing over it in my brane

anyway this group continues to not quite bowl me over by being 'real chill music' but with really anxious sounding vocals....it kinda makes it difficult for me....maybe thats whats good/interesting/unique about it i dunno

I'm underwhelmed still. The beats seem to carry it from front to back, but it's the melancholy of the previous albums that seems missing. The Animator is grand, but it's grand merely in a sculptural way. It's crafted. And while it's done perfectly, it's still crafted. I don't recall Junior Boys ever having to play-doh their way into/out of a song. The pure, natural melancholy seems absent.
I ofcourse will listen to this agian (and again), but the melancholy and the erotomachia seem absent.

Willem, please give me hope and tell me the melancholia and the eroticism are hidden well beneath this.

this is pleasant, though i think i would like it more with different vocals. first listen

"sneak a picture" has some R&Bish, "rock your body" reminiscent hooks that im digging on. i still wish the singer was a little less hushed

btw A+ band name, i thought this was some crunk group

people who are hearing junior boys for the first time here should really really REALLY REALLY hear last exit and so this is goodbye - i cannot stress this enough! i haven't given this new one enough of a chance to write it off, but those two are fucking special

i didnt like so this is goodbye - is last exist more or less like this one, which i really like

its about as diff from those two as goodbye was from exit

Terry Farley and Andrew Weatherall should have something to say about the Junior Boys (own) name. A Weatherall mix would be nice actually.

OK, this + the new Franz are making this year awesome already.

After living with this for a few days it has the edge over So This Is Goodbye, which only has a few tracks I ever want to go back to. I like how they've gone in two directions at once, they've ackowledged their fairly natural overlap with techno and minimal (Work in particular) and there's much more 4/4 here, but at the same time they've got better at writing pop songs. Their sonic palette is wider here than on the others (hearing a non-digital instrument, the sax sample on track three, for the first time in the context of a Junior Boys song feels weirdly refreshing, because they hold it back for so long).

Jordan - Last Exit is probably less like this one than So This Is Goodbye is, it stands slightly separately due to the Johnny Dark involvement and more syncopated tricky rhythms. It's the best of the three really.

i was able to talk to Jeremy after a show during the tour for So This Is Goodbye, and he mentioned becoming much more infatuated with working with hardware, where Last Exit was done almost entirely with software.

xpost to matt
yeah i noticed that brass today, loved it!

I dont get the doubts here, after one serious listen I am really loving this. It would have been nice to have at least one blinding tear-jerker a la "Teach Me How to Fight" or "So this is Goodbye" but, as their "pop" album, this is pretty sublime. Nice brass indeed and funny/sweet how the album closes with some acoustic guitar strumming. I can't wait to play it again

I don't see how this is their "pop" album at all, so far at least. Seems like more casual fans might reject this. I don't hear anything as deliberately poppy as "In the Morning", for instance, although that suits me just fine. So far this is doing a much better job than So This is Goodbye of distracting me from the fact that I love Johnny Dark-era Junior Boys most of all. This is really growing on me with every listen.

Hazel is as poppy as In The Morning, probably more so, but yeah it's not exactly going to be troubling the charts. I sort of feel like listening to their sound evolving is like watching something flowering very very slowly indeed. Like they're opening up into something that we won't see fully for another four or five albums.

But yeah, very slow evolution rather than anything radical. Aside from the Johnny Dark stuff, they're remarkably consistent in terms of quality and overall aesthetic.

I feel like the sequencing here really brings out the best in each of these tracks. They unfold so perfectly! And they're all very much cut from the same cloth, right down to the uniformly long-ish track lengths. The relative lack of variation is to the album's credit--it's like they're trying to keep a spell from being broken. There's no doubt I'm compelled to listen from start to finish each time.

http://i3.tinypic.com/4bfnofo.jpg"hazel"http://i3.tinypic.com/4bfnofo.jpg

I feel like the sequencing here really brings out the best in each of these tracks. They unfold so perfectly!

when the beat drops in dull to pause it's cause for celebration

I'm warming up to this.

when the beat drops in dull to pause it's cause for celebration

Thread OTM award.

I've only heard the first track (Parallel Lines) and it's typical JB brilliance. How are these guys not a mainstream concern? This is flawless electronic pop, people! Maybe too flawless for the masses...

http://www.vertor.com/ct_files/2/7/7/1/2771654//images/image1.jpg

lol

http://img02.picoodle.com/img/img02/3/3/26/brianm/f_jbm_1d53455.jpg

first two covers were kickass so I hope none of the ones posted so far are the real one

pretty sure i died's one is 4 real

mine is the real cover, it's on amazon

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001T46UBO/ref=s9_sdps_c2_s1_p15_t1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0FSC3PYVBNK21AFMRQ3A&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470938631&pf_rd_i=507846

Anyway, the Canadians are super-excited about the Marshall McLuhan referencing and bilingual titling. I look forward to hearing this record on the CBC.

owen you'll like it don't listen to everyone else itt

is this the postal service lolol

I wasn't being snark, I'm going to see 'em tomorrow night.

tour de force, fuiud

Pitchfork review so otm

I don't know, I hear it as a looser, lighter record than So This Is Goodbye - fun, even - and not nearly as "mature" or sterile as that review paints it. Not necessarily better, but I have totally fallen for it as I did for STIG, and I expect it to be right up there among my favourite albums of the year come December.

Mainly about the punctum-tastic Last Exit

What is it with PF reviews that like to end on this weird note of indecisiveness. It's torture to the readers.

"So when I call Begone Dull Care a "mature" album, know it skirts both the positive and negative connotations of one of the most divisive adjectives in pop's lexicon."

that's torture?

for the same reason "undecided" voters during an election should be round up and sent to death camps.

Still waiting for this album to "click" like Goodbye, which was my favorite album of 2006. It hasn't. I'm losing hope...

ha that's not a "Pitchfork review", that's jess harvell! how times change

Begone, Dull Hair! Away, Split Ends!

i was streaming some of this today and was getting a better vibe than when i first heard it. it might be one of those boring in a good way records, the jbs were always walking that line anyway.

I have only glanced at this thread but this album isn't "chill out" electronic. to me it's like yacht rock on a space station gazing down on Earth longingly or something.

This is OTM, and was made clearer after seeing them live last night, with Greenspan stretching out vocally (particularly on the new songs) like an electro Daryl Hall.

This is really good. Vocals are great.

(The real cover is terrible tho)

http://www.dominorecordco.com/images/artists/junior_boys/300_300/begone_pack_300.jpg

Anyone heard the Prins Thomas remix of Work? It's a bonus track on the iTunes version.

This record is so inferior to its predecessor. The first track is the best thing on here, then it goes downhill. So disappointing.

Also, really, So This Is Goodbye is such a good title. Begone Dull Care, not so much.

The lyrics on this are kind of bad too: "I like you better when the lights are out."

"I see you better when the lights are out"

Still really enjoy this.

Ah, you're right Millsner. Thanks for the correction.

Ewan Pearson's mixes of Hazel are nice

I dig this album. Haven't heard any remixes.

ha i really like the (corrected) line above. it took me until a couple weeks ago to realise how much i liked goodbye, though, so i am in no hurry to hear this; obviously i won't know if i like it or not until late 2011 or so

this actually

FM took me by surprise about a year after I'd given up on it, pulling out of a station at night, and the rest of the album kinda flowered outta that point.

i really like this record although my enjoyment of "Bits & Pieces" was ruined when my bf pointed out the little burp sounds in the background and now i can't listen to the track even though i love it. also kinda puzzled by the line "find a space on the floor/ take down the edges of your waist-coat".

the "find a space on the floor" bit reminds me of mr g.

"tape down".

This album left me cold. The previous one was one of 2006's best, to me.

I can't get over what a spectacular disappointment everything since the first album (and its promising remix extra-disc) has been for me. They used to get quoted talking about Ontario's Ballardian highway system, drew comparisons to Japan, and had a homely and rarely over-worked take on programmed rhythm... Cool dudes. And now? Sounds like Robbie Williams to me and they're only photographed wearing cravats and drinking port or whatever.

When I heard the last one I thought it was as if they wanted to go on to make a Canadian Songs From the Big Chair (as far as making big expensive pop for adults, if not in terms of actual content). Oh well, there's one thing Canadians are fucking terrible at and it happens to be making big expensive pop for adults.

We already have enough squelchy funk synth bass and lite-jazz piano chords and really looong laboriously sequenced songs in the world that I don't feel like anything post Last Exit doesn't give me anything I can't get better from somewhere else.

But what we don't have enough of is elegant, plain, and yet utterly jaw-dropping songs like Junior Boys made when they wrote "Teach Me How to Fight." Fuck me, there's even a little bit of Peter Hook-like guitar in the outro.

Not BDC-related, but also not worthy of its own thread, so it's going in here.

It's easy to miss, but the new Compost Black Label EP has a very tasty (though sadly, intrumental - which is odd considering the original has vocals on it) JB remix of Swiss electro pop dude Zwicker's "Who You Are".

(And in case you were wondering, it's yet another case of remix trumping original: Zwicker's track is pretty awful.)

New album out on 5th June. No other details available as yet.

still think this is underrated

Last track on BDC is one of their best.

i love this album

"The Animator" is in my top 10 most played tracks via last.fm, a bit surprised to see that

"hazel" still bangs

Underrated record for sure, stoked for more.

So happy there is a new album so soon, for some reason I wasn't expecting anything new till next year.

I still have lot of time for the last album, it wasn't as perfect as the first two but still had a lot of great moments especially Hazel and Bits & Pieces.

The Animator is my favourite JBs track by some distance. and i love a lot of them.