Boys keep chilling

It’s funny how some records echo the place where they were recorded. Slip Junior Boys’ new one, So This Is Goodbye, on the boombox and what grabs you immediately is its vastness. There's a sense of the epic to their modern, crystalline neo-pop that makes you think of wide, open fields, hills, valleys, space... Yup, it’s a dreadful cliche, but it is – on this occassion – very apt: So This Is Goodbye feels like a Canadian record.

Things have changed somewhat for the band since the release of their 2004 debut LP, Last Exit – former collaborator Johnny Dark has departed, leaving mainman Jeremy Greenspan and Matt Didemus at the controls. And with the change in personnel has come a change in sound and fundamental approach.
But more of that anon. First, we must get to the bottom of this Canada business. To what degree did the environment influence the record?
“I grew up in a small city in Canaa, where’s there’s no history,” Greenspan explains. “Living here you’re challenged to find beauty. So you look for it and find it in the malls, in plazas…everywhere.”
This search for emotion in the most unlikely of places has resulted in an oddly modern type of music. The JB songbook fits loosely into the electropop category, but Junior Boys replace that genre’s typical deadpan atmosphere with the polar opposite: complex words bathed in warmth and melancholy.
“There’s a vastness to the place,” he continues. “I live in a city – not in a tent in the middle of nowhere – but that vastness is always there, always surrounding you.”
Though some may disagree, the music’s grace, gentle presence and melancholic manner continually reminds hotpress of The Blue Nile.
“I’m interested in the melancholy,” resumes the concise and precise Jeremy. “I’m interested in the sadness…um, the sweet sadness if that makes sense. I don’t deal in the conventional narrative – I’m more interested in the abstraction of emotion, the abstraction of objects and places, distilled memories. Some of my songs are about people who are obsessive about collecting stuff. There’s beauty in the most mundane things.”
How long did the album take to make?
“We started it in the autumn, finished it in the winter and then got it mastered and all the other stuff that has to happen before a record comes out."
It was really all done in three months?
“I wrote a lot when we were on the road, so I had an album's worth of ideas ready to go. And I still have some left-over, so I could start another one now if we wanted to.”
The aforementioned change in line-up seems to have fundamentally changed the Junior Boys' core sound, with some internet speculators suggesting that Johnny Dark's departure has handed total musical control to Greenspan. Whatever about inter-band politics, there’s certainly a different approach to the new record. Things seem less hectic this time around.
“I don’t know if there’s more or less sounds per track on this album or the last, but there’s definitely less frantic energy.”
Another striking difference between So This Is Goodbye and their earlier work – in particular the 2003 debut EP, Birthday on Kin – are the reference points. Where before the beats pointed to glitch and two-step, today the skeleton is sparser and slower.
"We were listening to stuff like Mr. Fingers, which came out after disco ended but before house established itself as the dominant force it is now," he reflects. "I like the idea of being in that situation, the freedom of it, of not being bogged down.”
This record feels like a ‘new’ new pop, an update of that wide-eyed but well-informed British ‘scene’ that covered everyone from Japan to The Human League. Does that make sense?
“Absolutely,” Greenspan nods. "I've always felt we're a pop band. Pop isn't supposed to alienate people, it’s not supposed to be beyond them – it’s supposed to be stuff people want to listen to.”