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Releases / KIN003 - Junior Boys

Last Exit ALBUM - Format: Double Vinyl / CD

Release Date: June 2004


track listing

- more than real
- bellona
- high come down
- last exit
- neon rider
- birthday
- under the sun
- three words
- teach me how to fight
- when I'm not around





This is where The Wire aesthetic meets early ‘80s Smash Hits.....
It’s hard to believe there will be a better record than Last Exit released this year

***** UNCUT

beautiful, dance flecked electro-pop
**** Mixmag

brave new world of electro-pop... much more interested in mucking about with present day technology than simply recreating the past. very wise
**** Q magazine

Junior Boys' spectral vision of electronic pop is an understated, unpredictable delight.
**** The Guardian

New Order produced by The Neptunes, anyone? The first album of the 21st Century. Astonishing.
cmu online

uniformly catchy songwriting
junk media

continues to reveal new charms and ingenious dimensions with each listen
brainwashed

...the Junior Boys remain relatively unknown, still a synthetic star in the ascendancy. If there is any justice, Last Exit will change all that..a truly excellent album, one of the best of 2004 so far
dusted

songs that bring echoes of the past yet take a step forward
exploding plastic





order on-line through Forced Exposure for north america and Boomkat in the UK. check here for other territories.

album notes by piers martin

So much has already been written about Junior Boys’ extraordinary electronic pop music that adding to the reams of text at first seems a little unnecessary. However, most of these embarrassingly complimentary words have appeared online in weblogs and dedicated sites penned by switched-on high-profile enthusiasts, whose thoughtful, analytical critiques of whatever floats their boat on any given day have effectively become the new music journalism, where those disillusioned with the sorry state of writing found in today’s music and style magazines go for informed and edifying prose.

This is where the buzz surrounding the Canadian trio began, just before the release of their debut “Birthday” EP last year, and where it’s continued to build steadily, spilling over into mainstream publications and on to the radio, picked up by DJs, label types, tastemakers and freaks. There’s no hype, no fanfare accompanying this group’s assured ascent because Junior Boys are not particularly fashionable (yet) and their sensitive, soulful, serene sound tends to provoke a reflective, measured response from those who hear it, rather than the usual premature ejaculation of superlatives. Critics like Junior Boys records because they remind them of so many other groups and producers from the past, without really sounding like anyone but themselves. And critics love to try to categorise, to pin down this band’s distinctive style but, as you’ll appreciate when you play the album, that’s a tricky thing to do.

You can say that Last Exit, the album, sounds like X doing Y with Z if you like, but it’s the songs – the magnetic, mesmeric songwriting of Jeremy Greenspan – that stay with you long after the comparisons have faded from memory. His songs are vulnerable and sentimental without being wet, romantic and tender without resorting to cliché. Junior Boys’ music is cutting-edge but easy on the ear. They discreetly use clever arrangements and advanced techniques to make their synth-pop as human as possible. They have a talent for writing familiar songs in an unfamiliar way, and for writing unfamiliar songs in a familiar way. This music has never been underground as such, it’s just that no-one’s really aware of it yet. It’s classic pop, tailormade for mass appeal. Perhaps if they performed these songs using guitars rather than keyboards they might already be bigger stars.

You should always be suspicious of albums that you fall instantly in love with after that whirlwind first listen. Last Exit enchants only after a few spins; it’s difficult at first but do persevere. You know it’s good – not because everyone says it is – but because the melodies, the spot-on beats, and Jeremy’s vocals soon tease out the goosebumps. In any field this would be recognised as a strong debut album, not just at a time when there are so few decent electronic pop albums to get excited about. This is far more than a couple of singles and too much filler. Last Exit succeeds in every respect as an album because Junior Boys execute their ideas with style and grace. This is charming music for a charmless age, an old-fashioned style of pop performed in an exciting new way. No one’s saying Junior Boys will change your life, that would be silly. But they’ll certainly surprise you, if you let them.





sleeve artwork










promo sleeve artwork





the Junior Boys inhabit a woozy, half-awake, half-asleep driftspace in which melancholy and pleasure melt into one another. Their songs recall the early hours solitariness of the paintings of Edward Hopper, putting you in mind of the view through a rainswept windshield on a deserted road at midnight, or the distant will-o’-the-wisp dance of car headlights seen from a late-night hotel window.
9/10 Stylus




Over the past 12 months, Canadian trio Junior Boys have generated more purple prose on internet blogs than anyone except Dizzee Rascal, but they couldn't be more different. While Dizzee's innovations thwack the listener over the head, the quietly radical music on Last Exit hovers around the edges of your eardrums. By yoking lonely vocals and shivery synthesizers to intricate skeletal beats, Junior Boys variously suggest Talk Talk produced by Timbaland, Hall and Oates having a panic attack and a very sleepy underworld. In different hands, some of the songs might be butterscotch- smooth MOR but Jeremy Greenspan's voice never loses its neurotic edge. When I'm not Around is a deep-freeze version of 1980 boudoir soul, with a desolate saxophone that sounds as if it got lost en route to a Sade album and wants to go home. Junior Boys' spectral vision of electronic pop is an understated, unpredictable delight.
**** The Guardian