You catch the mid-tempo beat as the night fades to black and the lights on the dance floor fall in saturated reds and blues, your body slipping into a supple, hip-shaking groove, ass grinding lightly against the anonymous partner moving at your back, then not so lightly as he draws you closer, and suddenly his breath is on your neck and in your ear and you can smell the musk of invitation on his skin. The music has loosened you up, made you comfortable in your sensuality, so maybe you'll accept. Or perhaps you'll realize it's the hypnotizing effect of the Junior Boys' indietronica, a heady fusion of electro-pop, R&B, disco and UK garage buoyed by the falsetto caress of singer Jeremy Greenspan, his tender whispery tone seeming to encourage the mating dance.
"I definitely don't do that on purpose," Greenspan laughed after I asked him about his music's inherent sexiness when I interviewed him last week. "I've always wanted my music to feel like pop songs, and the easiest way to make a pop song is to put it within the context of love or relationships or sex or whatever. But most of the themes of our music and most of the lyrics have very little to do with sex."
The Ontario duo's third and latest, Begone Dull Care (out this April on Domino) may come on the least strong of all Junior Boys albums, which could be credited to its inspiration: Norman McLaren's 1949 animated experimental film of the same name.
"I really love his stuff and it inspires me to want to work. And I don't know if it's because I love his movies, or that I love the intricate detail, or the sort of psychedelic imagery of them. Or, if it also has something to do with my respect for him as an artist, and how he embodies everything I would want to be myself, someone who creates stuff that is very inviting." Greenspan is drawn to McLaren's straightforward approach as an experimenter. "Which is sort of what I've always wanted our music to be while at the same time being as deeply experimental as possible. I like experimental work within the context of popular culture."
Greenspan says he tried to follow McLaren's philosophy of working instinctually and on the fly, and not overthinking things too much. "We have the capacity to overdo the details, and on this record, we really, really went to town." Begone Dull Care may sound uncomplicated at first listen, but throw on a pair of good headphones and you'll hear a whole new layer of synthesized textures, sonic flourishes, analog beats and blips, vocal splices, samples, and other audio variousness. "A lot of the McLaren influence was me telling myself 'OK, Jimmy, calm down, don't be overzealous.' But I do like intricate things, of all types. I've always been drawn to any type of artwork where you get lost in the intricate details."
The duo faced other challenges in recording Begone Dull Cure. Junior Boys co-conspirator Matt Didemus got hitched and moved to Berlin while Greenspan remained in Ontario, and rather than collaborate online, the two took turns traveling back and forth between continents to work on the album in month-long chunks. And while both players have become technically savvy in the studio, their capabilities also represented some unique difficulties.
"We're trying to find a middle ground between not getting too confident in our abilities and still trying to play around and try and make sure we don't think we know everything there is to know," Greenspan explained. "Because, basically, all the best music comes from a sense of feeling lost in the studio, not knowing what you're doing, and coming up with something interesting. So as much as possible, we try to unhinge ourselves, try not to feel too confident, don't rely on the same technique, don't rely on the same gear, all that kind of stuff."
Greenspan was introduced to industrial music and the acid house sounds of Detroit techno as a teenager growing up in Hamilton, Ontario. Because Detroit was a mere 200 miles southwest of Greenspan's hometown, "All these DJs and producers would come up and play periodically, and I'd go see them because there was no age limit to get into those parties." At 16, he spent a year in England when the underground dance scene was taking off in the mid-'90s, and that's when his interest in electronic music really blossomed. He discovered synth-pop, post-punk, New Wave and UK garage, which laid the foundation for Greenspan's own rhythmic sensibility, and he scored a job in a recording studio and picked up all the equipment tricks he needed to set out on his own electro path.
Back in Hamilton, Greenspan began writing and experimenting with material as early as 1999, when his Junior Boys project featured original member Johnny Dark. Unfortunately, by the time their demo reached Nick Kilroy — who'd just launched KIN Records and was ready to sign Junior Boys as his first artist in 2002 — Dark had abandoned the project and Greenspan was riding solo. Kilroy wasn't deterred, so Greenspan hooked up with Didemus, a childhood friend and occasional collaborator. The new and improved Junior Boys cleaned up the unfinished tracks, wrote some new material and in early 2004, released their debut, Last Exit. Domino signed then soon after and distributed Last Exit in the U.S. that summer.
College radio fell in love, and a whirlwind of good press and indie fame followed along with a tour opening for Mouse on Mars, which eventually invited Junior Boys to play their home town in Germany. There, in a mere two days, they wrote and recorded "In the Morning." The song became the first single on their sophomore effort, 2007's So This Is Goodbye. That album found the duo refining their musical palette, experimenting with textures and layers, and bringing a deeper emotional impact to their lyricism. So This Is Goodbye kept the duo on the road for the next few years and allowed them to learn to adapt their studio albums (which were produced with analog drum machines, synthesizers and computers) into engaging live performances, with Greenspan on vox, guitar and keys, Matt programming via a huge table of samplers and synths, and a drummer keeping the beats.
Junior Boys are currently enjoying their second headlining tour in the U.S. and for the October leg, they're throwing a Halloween party on the road and awarding prizes to those fans with the best costumes. "I've always been sort of Halloween-obsessed, ever since I was a kid. And I was sort of bummed out that I was going to be missing Halloween at home with my friends and stuff, 'cause I always sort of make a big to-do of it. So I just sort of said, 'Well, fuck it, I'll just turn the whole tour into a Halloween party.'"
He admitted that so far, there weren't too many people dressing up, but he said there've been a few festive folks at each of the shows so far. "I suspect the closer we get to Halloween, the more dressed up people are going to be." Here's hoping the Bay area crowd gets into the spirit and makes it an electro monster mash to remember.
This article appears in Oct 22-28, 2009.