May 17, 2006
MP3 of the Moment #4: Junior Boys, "Teach Me How to Fight"
I don’t remember when I downloaded the Junior Boys’ debut album, Last Exit (read reviews here). It must have been sometime in late 2004, when the group was riding to prominence on a wave of MP3 blog attention. I immediately took to the group’s intimate, yet chilly, bedroom electro-pop; the record’s best songs seemed like the perfect soundtrack to the liminal moments on either end of a long night out—dressing up for the bar or club, or, more pertinently, lying awake in bed at four in the morning, unable to sleep. “Birthday” and “Last Exit” were both released on EPs or as singles, and were treated to remixes courtesy of big-name musicians (Fennesz, Manitoba). But, returning to the album again recently, it’s “Teach Me How to Fight” that I cannot stop listening to. The song possesses all of the group’s signature elements: quiet, insistent, micro-house-style beats (here nestled in granular texture); atmospheric keyboard melodies; and singer Jeremy Greenspan’s whispery, come-hither vocals.
The group’s second album, So This Is Goodbye, comes out on August 14th from Domino Recording Co. (You can read all about it on this post at k-punk.) In the meantime, “Teach Me How to Fight” is available for download at the bottom of the middle column.
UPDATE, 9/13: Jonathan Liu raves about the new album at the New York Observer, in a column titled "When Sexy Met Indie."