Junior Senior - Hey Hey My My Yo Yo5.5 stars out of 10Junior Senior - Say Hello, Wave Goodbye EP7 stars out of 10This is a handful of my favorite upbeat pop music: the second half of ABBA's career; Madonna's
Like a Virgin and
Like a Prayer; Andrew W.K. (the metal ABBA); Janet Jackson's "Runaway;" and Junior Senior's debut,
D-D-Don't Stop the Beat.Junior Senior's "Move Your Feet" got a lot of play in 2003, but that was when Daft Punk (another recent favorite of mine) were also getting some decent play on the airwaves. Even then, they weren't really "a mainstream band;" the Danish duo of one straight and one gay respectively (as they put it indelibly in the even-more-indelibly-titled "Chicks and Dicks") just played extremely palatable, upbeat pop music infused with soulful '60s sweetness. Well, good news, I guess: they haven't quit yet. Actually released in 2005 overseas, LP #2,
Hey Hey My My Yo Yo, essentially slows down the style to more of a "groove," with some birth-of-rap-era ideas newly mixed in. It isn't an inherently bad idea for an album, especially with Junior as a mastermind and mic-sharing by the Velvelettes, every member of Le Tigre and both Kate & Cindy from the B-52's. I just simply won't listen to
Hey Hey as often as I did (and still)
D-D-Don't Stop. Considering their M.O., this album's exuberance and freshness just doesn't burst the same way, especially in the '60s-summoning throwbacks "I Like Music (W.O.S.B.)" and "No No No's," which don't even come close to matching the similar-minded "Boy Meets Girl" from
D-D-Don't. That being said, the first three songs on the record are growers, and any decent club DJ with a sense of kitsch or flamboyance would do fine to mix with them.Luckily, it doesn't please the boys just to take two years to release an old album stateside, and so they've included a brand new (as in 2007) seven-song EP called
Say Hello, Wave Goodbye - hilariously, just over three minutes shorter than the LP (31 minutes to
Hey Hey's 34). Though it does not lack Senior's presence, this EP appears to be the result of Junior stretching out in the studio, featuring only two songs under four minutes. By doing so, they consistently reach higher heights than those hit on
Hey Hey, here generally using as a mold the spirit of Madonna's first couple albums. Funky "Me decade" dance-floor pop jams of many stripes are explored (funniest title, also a great song: "I Can't Rap, I Can't Sing, But I Would Do Anything"), and the finest effort is the 5-minute "Headphone Song," mixed immaculately and capped off with a kind of incredible, soaring coda. This is the kind of craft that rightly puts fellow dance-pop groups, all the "indie" rage over the last few years, to shame. With two extra songs of the quality found on
Say Hello, Wave Goodbye tacked on to the disc, it would've been a great full-length record; as it is,
Say Hello joins
D-D-Don't in the pantheon of uber-listenability, and corrects the slight misstep of
Hey Hey by making them into more than a one-album wonder and me excited to see what they'll be up to next.If I may close with something of a tangent: Shiny, mainstream-worthy pop music is something else. A musical omnivore like me can often get the sensation that, more than with almost any genre, it can stoke the pleasure mechanism of both everybody (in the world) and nobody else (in the company one keeps). When I decided I loved Gwen Stefani and the Neptunes' smash hit "Hollaback Girl," I felt oddly alone, even though it was the most popular song in the country. I feel similarly about Junior Senior, even though a couple of my friends are on the bandwagon with me (and I actually got recommended them personally by one of said friends back when their debut hit). But this is something that I, as one who rarely feels shame regarding his tastes, have no choice but to accept; by pressing play on Junior Senior, I can just pretend they're playing over the PA at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, where, when I worked there for a few months in 2003, I discovered the pleasure I could get from the Madonna and Janet songs that the rest of the world hears as wallpaper.-Spencer Owenp.s.
As evidenced last night at
Popscene in San Francisco, they're still nailing the old material and they're breathing life into the new stuff, especially those songs I called "growers," although sadly no appearances from
Say Hello. On the albums, Junior handles all the songwriting, all the production and most of the instruments, but Senior's mustached, effervescent character is completely necessary, and nowhere is this more apparent than on stage. Their drummer locks into a click-track-guided groove and they just make you have way too much fun. Bonus: JD from Le Tigre made an appearance on her song from
Hey Hey, "Can I Get Get Get" ("...to know-nuh-know-know you better-better baby?"). By the way, I do love the stuttering.p.p.s.
Hear the exceptional "Headphone Song" courtesy of Stereogum!
Comments (3)