Junior Boys
Big Black Coat
[City Slang]
In the five years since the last Junior Boys album, both members dabbled in a variety of projects outside their main gig. Matthew Didemus released records under the codename DIVA, while Jeremy Greenspan, amongst other things including his own solo releases, worked on two impeccable electronica records: with his pal Dan Snaith on Caribou’s Our Love, and with his partner Jessy Lanza on her debut Pull My Hair Back.
Big Black Coat fits well with that pair in terms of a sonic terrain of crisp synth panoramas and sincere, earnest vocals vocals over skittering drum machines. Like both those records, it makes the analogue/digital divide redundant and draws happily from both rather than slavishly adhering to one or the other, while also maintains a real sense of the humanity behind the technology that has always been a hallmark of the best moments of the Junior Boys’ catalogue.
A signature move here is the treatment of What You Won’t Do For Love?, a blue-eyed soul number from the seventies, which gets transformed into some kind of lost early house classic full of twinkly sequencer lines. It’s an illustration of just how well synthesised the influences are here, while the closing title track (which presaged this album’s release as a single late last year) mixes carefully controlled emptiness of minimal techno with the embracing warmth of the titular object. An early contender for blah blah blah.
Words: Ian Lamont
Like this? Try these:
John Talabot – ƒIN
Frankie Knuckles – Your Love
Caribou – Our Love
