Junior Boys - It's All True

"Sneak a Picture" might be my fave JBs sad jam

"Banana Ripple" is the one for me

There's a sense of space in the first one that the others lack, these perfectly constructed syncopated beats that play off all the other sounds and then drop off altogether, this rhythmic cage for the sadness in the songs to reverberate around, there's no sound there that doesn't need to be there. Subsequent albums lost that a bit, especially whenever they went upbeat, but I can listen to the title track of Last Exit and it works for me every single time.

The second album is wonderful as well but that Johnny Dark clatter bought something to the table on the debut that their progressively more straightforward subsequent albums have never quite recaptured.

I think So This is Goodbye and Begone Dull Care are about as good as the debut, albeit a bit less busy; iirc it was among if not the first sort of indie groups that seemed to be influenced by Timbaland-styled R&B production. This one (It's All True) is the first one that never entered regular rotation for me. The most recent one I only remember listening to once, need to revisit!

I agree with Matt DC

Banana Ripple is a whopper tune.

I still think of brad's "it makes me want to punch a cop" comment every time it comes on

that wasn't me, that was adam!

banana ripple makes me want to get a neck tattoo and punch a cop

― adam, Friday, December 11, 2015 9:24 AM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

most otm post in ilx history? who can say

Oh shit props adam

*three years after big black coat comes out* boy big black coat sure sounds good today

It's a teensy step below IAT imo but it's still very good. Looking forward to new material this year.

I did find this quote from an interview about the lyrics for the album interesting

Much in the way your last album was very autobiographical, I take it this album isn’t coming from your perspective, but the people around you?

Absolutely. I wrote this album thinking about the kinds of people in my hometown. It’s a typical rust belt, post-industrial city where 80,000 people were employed by the steel mills, and now there’s only 4,000 people employed, so it’s a run down, depressive city with lots of lonely resentful men wandering the streets. The songs tended to be from their perspective, filled with men dealing with emotionally complex lives that they don’t want to articulate, so it just comes across as loneliness. There’s actually a little thread of misogyny, because it’s men dealing with being creepy toward women because they have nothing left.

... hm

well i guess we'll see

tbc that quote is about Big Black Coat

oh wow so i guess it did work!

lol i'm really good at reading today

begone dull care is the one that I previously neglected but really clicked with me recently. so many great little details I’d never noticed, like the slide guitar at the end of Dull To Pause. and I love how spacious and unhurried it feels

BDC is a weird little record but "Sneak a Picture" belongs in any Junior Boys POX

Ah, I've been thinking about how much I still love this band a lot recently. I just played Begone Dull Care the other day. It's such a lovely record if you can get past the weird sequencing choice of putting Work as the second track. I've never understood why it was seen as a big drop off after the first two albums. Bits & Pieces, Hazel and Sneak A Picture are some of their best songs.

*three years after big black coat comes out* boy big black coat sure sounds good today

― jolene club remix (BradNelson), Friday, March 15, 2019 6:03 PM (eight months ago) bookmarkflaglink

just about ready for the next one, it should be illegal that they don't have a new album out every other fall

I don't know why it's taken four months of relative isolation to realise this but Last Exit is quite obviously one of my favourite records: its space of doubt, its metallic whispers, its interconnected, sprawling quality.

But why can't I really wait?
Don't you want me here so
I can offer you three words so true?
Like I know you

I assume they're just sitting on the next LP at this point. c'mon gents let's hear it

i've only listened to the first few tracks so far but the new Jessy Lanza might be a decent way to tide yourself over.

oh I've heard it and it rules. to the extent that I'd love to hear her add production to their records!

I think I read somewhere after the release of BBC that Greenspan isn’t interested in making any more Junior Boys records (sadly) and is more interested in reorienting his creative efforts into making music with Lanza

aw, understandable but altogether too bad. I'm sure he'll get the itch again at some point.

oh damn josh i don't think i'd read that. any recollection of where?

they did drop that EP soon after BBC that was great (Kiss Me All Night), but was released rather quietly. nice complement to the album though.

he also built a ridiculous studio and mix room from the ground up in the intervening years: https://www.instagram.com/bartonbuildingstudio/

the new jessy is great. it's always a little curious he does virtually zero press around the albums. i know early on he had some concern of his name somehow overshadowing things; maybe still the case. but seems just as much his project as hers (co-written, co-produced and fully mixed) that i personally just want to hear him riff on it!

I liked the new record so much that I've been revisting the old ones. you know what I think I really disagree with the idea that the first two albums were the best. of course both great and I don't think Begone Dull Care tops them (as much as I love certain tracks) but this one I think is actually better? maybe it's just the proghead in me. listen to all those cool countermelodies! the way those slowly shifting off-time rhythms in "Kick the Can" sync up in the end! there's a 9 minute track and its pretty obviously the best thing they've done! is this just like one of those bands that people feel on such a personal level that the first record they hear by them is their favorite?

I think there is at least a decent argument that this is their best album, though I have never thought that it is particularly clear which one is. I do tend to think it’s their most accomplished and widest ranging but also most gregarious album. It’s also the album that least feels like the group are playing to a pre-established notion of style (though that is not necessarily a mark of superiority: one of the nice things about both the first album and the most recent is how much they sound like they’re quite deliberately going for a certain sound).

xp It is a first-record-heard thing for me (Last Exit) and there's really no possible way I'll listen to any of the others as often in my life. You just couldn't fit very much on a flash drive mp3 player in 2004 lol. First time living on my own at the time, etc. But thanks for the prompt to give this one another go.

oh shit I just realized something - this is the modern version of Abacab-era Genesis

i mean that in a really good way of course

it is very Abacab.

Kick the Can is one of those things I think Tony Banks would've come up with had they been making music in the sequencer era