Album Review: It's All True - Junior Boys

Junior Boys are one of those few acts where I am frankly just happy for them to stay the same. Their slick take on eighties influenced pop feels like an alternative future where Spandau Ballet ruled the world. Despite this the slight change in direction It's All True represents feel like a definite change for the better.

Sonically this album radiates sunshine. Their most overtly sensual and warm album yet and the result is that things get suspiciously close to Balearic. Married to Johnny Greenspan's as-ever gorgeous vocals this is a very good thing indeed - an irresistible hit of relaxed, dry heat. The songs here vary from being loved up and snappy, as on the punchy rhythms of 'A Truly Happy Ending' to relaxed to the point of apathy. 'Playtime' is a perfect example of the latter - a track that feels like it has been left out in the sun to the point of near-total evaporation. It's almost as though there is nothing left, the crawl to it's conclusion only just about manageable.

Lyrically and emotionally then It's All True is the aural equivalent of the cat Garfield, trapped within a sunbeam that suddenly imparts such a warm feeling of apathy that he can no longer manage the energy needed to move beyond it's grasp. Greenspan sounds overwhelmed by his affections. On opener 'Itch Fingers' he sounds completely aware that his emotions may be being toyed with, yet embraces his feelings anyway. Similarly on 'You'll Improve Me' Greenspan's persistent chorus of "That's the way you'll improve me" is simultaneously cloying and naïve - sounding both like an unwelcome admirer and a victim all at once.

Sunshine and lies run through this album like a seam. The title appears to relate to not just one song but all of them - several making explicit references to truth and lies and the others depicting someone in a state of lying to themselves. It's All True is best when this is combined with warmth and funk however - 'Second Chance' with its tight percussion and bubbling bass line.

Things close with 'Banana Ripple'. I've already mentioned this track in a previous post but it bears highlighting it again - it isn't just the best thing the Junior Boys have ever done, it's probably the best track I've heard all year. 'Banana Ripple' is pure summer sunshine exuberance and it feels like the manifestation of a change in the band - like the straight guy losing fear and taking the dance floor for his own: suddenly they can dance! Huge keyboards, organs and beautiful muted guitar combine with Greenspan's calls: "You'll never see me go...", like he finally wised up and left. And it has that feeling - it's empowered and striking and goosebump inducing.

Call it hyperbole, but in my head this is what the first summer of love sounds like.

BP x

It's All True is released on Domino on 4 July in the UK and 14 June elsewhere, available for pre-order from Amazon.co.uk on CD and LP [affiliate links].

Comment: Banana Ripple - Junior Boys

Over the weekend I received a promo for the new Junior Boys album, It's All True, from Domino and I have to say it has rapidly become one of my favourite albums I have heard in a while. I'll definitely be doing a full review of this soon but it is so good that I can't help but want to get others as excited as I am.

A couple of months back I linked to the Domino site where you could download album track 'ep' so I thought I'd share another track off the album. This one you (sadly) can't download but it is well worth a stream over at Soundcloud. 'Banana Ripple' is the album closer and blends the Boys' usual warm, soft sound with a loved up sense of Ballearia. It's pure summer joy and I love it.

Junior Boys - Banana Ripple by DominoRecordCo

Get excited: summer's here.

BP x

News: Junior Boys to release new album

I've long been a fan of the Junior Boys sound - there is something about Jeremy Greenspan and Matt Didemus' approach to songwriting and production. When at their best there music has an incredibly polished sound - not something I'd usually appreciate but in their case it really creates a spellbinding mood.

Thankfully a new album is on the way - entitled It's All True it will come out on Domino on 20 June 2011 but Domino are giving away album track 'ep' now. Head over and give up your email address to check it out.

'ep' is classic Junior Boys stuff - sun kissed vocal melodies and warm synths, it's kind of pointless to resist and whilst it doesn't suggest much of a departure in terms of sound it definitely has me excited for the album.

BP x

2009: The Best of the Year

BlackPlastic tends to vary its approach to the inevitable end-of-year wrap-up a bit each year. Sometimes we do a full detailed breakdown of the best albums and compilations, whereas other times it is less formal summary of all that was good in the past 12 months. 2009 will be treated using the latter approach - this is partly in reflection of the quality of the year but it as much simply a reflection of the way BlackPlastic feels like tackling it this year. Lists are unimportant and to stick to them can constrain what needs to be said.

2009 was not quite the same vintage as 2008 in BlackPlastic's opinion (for more on 2008 see here, here and here) but it did have some absolutely fantastic music all the same:

One of the great things about end of year reviews is that they afford BlackPlastic the opportunity to go back and comment on albums we unfortunately missed at the time. No record from 2009 deserves that more than Girls' first album. Entitled, erm, Album, it was one of those records that sounds like a compilation tape from a mate with impeccable taste. The style is inconsistent but the passion and inventiveness of the tunes more than make up for it. Many have said that the production of this album is somewhat vanilla, classic as opposed to contemporary, and as such this is a record all about the tunes. BlackPlastic doesn't buy that - frankly it just sounds too 2009 for such twaddle to wash. Yes, it may contain classical styles but they have been applied with a modern sensibility and there are hints of too many times, styles and genres for this album to be anything but modern. Track to check: 'Lauren Marie'.

One of 2009's surprise highlights was The Horrors' sophomore album, Primary Colours. Channelling Joy Division and Can what it lacked in originality it made up for in quality of execution. Check: 'Sea Within a Sea'.

Showing off David Sitek's production skills even more than the Yeah Yeah Yeah's rather ace It's Blitz!, one of 2009's best débuts came from Telepathe in the form of Dance Mother. Abstract, dubby and ambient yet accessible and infectious. Check: that sublime production on 'Chrome's On It'.

Junior Boys' third album is perhaps a tricky one to love - it feels like a streamlined version of their precious two. Yet listening to Begone Dull Care it is clear this is a duo at the top of their game - streamlined is actually refined, for nothing this year boasted as much brains, as pure a vision. Frankly it is the best intelligent dance album since Morgan Geist's Double Night Time. Check: 'Parallel Lines'.

And if the Junior Boys refined then the Dirty Projectors' let the chips lie where they fell. Bitte Orca built on previous album Rise Above by growing in every conceivable direction. It still sounds simultaneously timeless and unapologetically futuristic. Check: the R&B anthem 'Stillness Is The Move'.

Another one of those records that got away - Desire's II has only just found its way onto the BlackPlastic stereo but the slightly sinister vibe and dark take on Italo ensures it'll be on rotation well into this year. If you listen to just one track make it the emotive ballad that is 'Don't Call'.

Also dark but without the retro edge was Telefon Tel Aviv's Immolate Yourself. It's been years since BlackPlastic has heard IDM that packs such a punch. Sadly band member Charles Cooper died soon after finishing this album. Rumour has it that his death may have been suicide. Listen to 'You Are The Worst Thing In The World' and it almost feels as though the pain of his passing has infected the songs.

Heart stoppingly beautiful at times, no record made BlackPlastic laugh and almost cry at the same time as much as Jeffrey Lewis & The Junkyard's 'Em Are I. Check: 'Bugs & Flowers'

Two albums that managed to get BlackPlastic really gurning again: Nathan Fake's Hard Islands and Fuck Buttons' Tarot Sport. Making trance music sound like rock music flicked our switch. Check 'Castle Rising'and 'Olympians' respectively.

Overlooked by practically everyone else but saving a special place in our hearts is The Juan Maclean's The Future Will Come. It may not quite match the heights of 2005's 'Dance With Me' but it is still the best realised concept album from 2009. Check the muted brilliance of 'Tonight'.

It is seriously over-hyped and they were dangerously close to becoming 2009's Burial (stylistically coming off somewhat like the indie equivalent of Burial, too): the XX. Yet they still managed to tug on our heart strings on debut album XX. The atmospheric melancholy and loneliness is one thing but the XX never shine more than when the vocals demonstrate their heart, as on 'Heart Skipped a Beat'.

Some music does it for BlackPlastic simply by being incessantly joyful. That is the case for Passion Pit's Manners - not since Architecture in Helsinki released an album has anything sounded quite so ridiculously happy. Check 'Little Secrets'.

Barely scrapping into 2009, Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavillion is probably the oldest album on this list yet it is still very nearly took the top spot. From the ecstatic opening of 'In The Flowers' this was an album to lose yourself in. Dizzyingly creative and heart-warmingly joyful, it is telling that it has all but made us forget band member Panda Bear's almost as good solo album, Person Pitch. Most people will recommend 'My Girls' as the top tune but they are wrong - it has to be that delirious opener.

Snuck in at the other side of 2009, Lindstrøm & Christabelle's Real Life Is No Cool is this list's newest album. And glorious it is too, a sunny slither of disco perfection that turned out to be Lindstrøm's career highpoint to date. Check 'Keep It Up'.

Before the wrap with the album of the year a couple of compilations and a reissue deserve a mention.

The reissue is the Units' The Early Years of the Units 1977-1983, a set that proves there were legitimate challengers to Devo's creative dominance of the post-punk period. Seriously - this shit is essential, the cream from one of the best periods in music.

Compilation number one is Jay Haze's Fabric 47, which frankly came out of nowhere and blew BlackPlastic away. By the time this eclectic set arrives at the exclusive hip-hop track 'Something To Say' by Rockey that closes the album we were head over heels. Pure class.

Our other favourite compilation is Phoenix's Kitsuné Tabloid release. After a balls out start from Digitalism, Phoenix took the Tabloid series in a much, much more interesting direction. Featuring barely any tracks from recent years it instead manages to introductive the listener to some gems they won't know as well as reintroducing some they will. It also serves as a perfect autobiography for the band and, more to the point, sounds utterly gorgeous all the way through.

No contest for album of the year though. On BlackPlastic's first few listens it was great... A perfect fit like your favourite jeans. Yet it just got better and better. And better. No album kept us coming back quite like Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. Performed live it is even better and it is telling that almost every track on the album is on the set list for the recent tour.

Putting your finger on what makes Wolfgang... so great is tricky, but BlackPlastic will try:

Producer Philippe Zdar (of Cassius) manages to distill a great band into a phenomenal one. Each track is so incredibly tight that it sounds like a band being covered by robots, in the best possible way. And at the same time Thomas Mars' vocals give the whole album a sense of urgency and vitality that most bands can only dream of. If they called it quits now Phoenix would still be one of the best bands of the last decade. Here is hoping they continue being fabulous.

BP x

Album Review: Begone Dull Care - Junior Boys

Junior Boys: the auditory equivalent of perfection through design. A Junior Boys record feels like slipping on a perfect new jacket, firing up a sports car in the show room, turning on that pristine new MacBook Pro.

They have always had that feeling and, in all likelihood, probably always will. Above all Junior Boys produce shimmering 80s influenced pop music and Begone Dull Care does not meddle with this formula. If you didn't like either of the first two albums then you are unlikely to like this.  If you have accused their sound of being over-produced then you still will.

Having said which, if you don't like either of the first two albums then BlackPlastic has concerns for your ability to judge anyway.

Begone Dull Care is more of the same in the best possible way - it takes what was great and refines it. It is a more positive, slightly more upbeat affair, and more than ever this feels like a duo in mastery of their sound. By focusing on just eight tracks here it truly sounds like an album where every single beat, bleep and vocal has been obsessed over.

The whole thing is very beautiful, with the kind of rarified sound BlackPlastic would expect from a Blue Nile release or something similar, where years have been poured into each song. The shimmering pop feels fare to cared for to be 'just' another album.

If BlackPlastic were mean it would suggest that, maybe, a little live instrumentation could have made this great album classic. Just listen to what a touch of trumpet did on closing track 'Lullaby' from Morgan Geist's Double Night Time last year.

BlackPlastic isn't feeling mean however so we simply say: some music dulls with repeated listens. Like a child force fed cotton candy: the novelty wears off. Other albums reward the listener for making repeated visits, growing, maturing with age. Begone Dull Care falls into the latter case. Get it now because when you play this in ten years it will sound so much better for the memories it will then hold.

Available at Amazon.co.uk on CD and LP .

BP x

Album Review: Double Night Time - Morgan Geist

Some songs sound like a tumble down the stairs into the warm embrace of a brand new lover: they are full of excitement, adrenalin an gimmicks. Others rely much less on tricks and instead focus on quality and longevity. BlackPlastic has two upcoming reviews, with one falling into each of the above categories.

Unsurprisingly, Morgan Geist's new (and to BlackPlastic's knowledge, first solo) album Double Night Time contains songs that resemble the latter template rather than the former. Put it on your CD shelf and it WILL be judging you, your frivolous Ed Banger CDs, that ridiculous Hadouken! album, the fact that you have a secret admiration for the Wombats.

Because, without doubt, this album is too good for you. What you have in Double Night Time is a beautifully crafted body of work. An album where every click, drum pattern and synth line has been carefully considered, fretted over and perfected.

Yet there are the odd duff moments, like on instrumental 'Nocobo' for example, where the ideas just seem to lack the pizazz of the releases of Geist's other project Metro Area. The occasional dry patch is more than made up for elsewhere, however. Following in the footsteps of last year's 'Most of All', which itself features here, many of the songs here feature vocals from Junior Boys' Jeremy Greenspan. And the result is never less than glorious - 'Detroit' is pure sophistication, shimmying on by like the best lay you never had whilst 'Ruthless City' boasts a minimal approach to pop that shows what you can do with a bass line, a bit of synth and a few snippets of the right vocal. Greenspan's vocals are just made for this shit - the subtlety of the instrumentation complimenting perfectly the understated nature of his voice.

Yet despite how good a combination Geist and Greenspan make, Double Night Time's best track is completely instrumental, the relaxed yet haunting 'Lullaby'. Minimal and intelligent, it largely reflects what makes Geist's music great on the whole. The trumpet that carries the melody through to the album's finish is a fitting end to an set that sparkles.

BP x