31. Junior Boys - Last Exit (2004)

Junior Boys are a duo from Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Initially comprising bedroom producers Jeremy Greenspan and Johnny Dark; they spent the first few years of the new millennium putting together demos and shipping them around. Johnny Dark then left the group to pursue other interests, and in the meantime the Kin label showed interest in the demos and commissioned further work.
Teaming up with local engineer Matt Didemus, Greenspan worked on the demos and wrote some new material which led to the release of the debut album Last Exit.

Last Exit was a slow burner, not initially selling, but gradually building a reputation, especially on the new format of the blog. This was the golden age of the blog, and many of the most progressive and interesting writers came to this new format, attracted by the lack of an editor and the freedom to express ideas and write in long form, which would never be excepted in a monthly or weekly publication.

Artists were also able to write and publish in real time, quickly creating scenes with like-minded acts and individuals around the planet. Authors like Simon Reynolds and the Hyperdub label boss Steve Goodman (AKA Kode9) were early champions of Junior Boys.

Last Exit was an important development in North American dance music, and might represent the New Order at Paradise garage, Depeche Mode moment, as an act that could combine song craft and real dancefloor knowledge. It feels as though the beats come from a genuine love of grassroots house, grime and 2-step garage. Unlike contemporaneous British shite like Klaxons, who, like a pisstake of rave, appeared as an art school rock band with glow sticks.

Greenspan's songs on Last Exit combine intricate electronic rhythms with soft breathy vocals, reminiscent of Prefab Sprout or Scritti Politti, albeit without such good lyrics!
Themes of travel, distance and a yearning sweetness inhabit these tracks of groove and seduction. Subject matter which was familiar to the indie crowd, who embraced them; as did dance producers like Manitoba and Carl Craig who provided remixes.

Birthday and High Come Down were released as singles and are both on the album, proper pop. Stuttering intricate garage beats, Greenspan wants to 'see you shake this whole damn crowd'. Birthday about being forgotten on your birthday or some such nonsense, is almost Morrisseyesque in it's self-pity (a good thing).
This kind of melancholy has since been fully absorbed into the music of acts like The Weeknd or Drake, the natural successors of Morrissey.



Under the Sun is a good track, driving and mid paced like Krautrock meets Madchester. Teach Me How to Fight, expresses sentiments last heard from early 90's ultra indie Sarah records groups like the Sea Urchins, although perhaps The Field Mice with their electro indie heartbreaks are a closer fit.
Very underrated group The Field Mice.


Anyhoo Junior Boys went on to more success with their following album, the also excellent 'So this is goodbye'. Their most recent album Big Black Coat came out this year.

32. MV & EE with The Bummer Road - Mother of Thousands (2006)

MV & EE are partners Matt Valentine and Erika Elder. Prior to this duo, the pair had been a part of the New York based Tower Recordings, now credited as early catalysts of the free folk (a term coined by Valentine) movement which peaked in the mid 00's.
Valentine and Pat Gruber (AKA PG Six) had been main movers in that scene, and from their record shop day jobs, had worked against the prevailing trend of heavy rock and modernist electronics to seek out like-minded outsider artists and in a deliberate retreat from a world which had just become ultra connected, they did an escape to the country. This retreat mirrored an older generation of psychedelic folksters such as Vashti Bunyan, Alexander 'Skip' Spence  and John Fahey, bonds were formed.
The wilderness chosen was in the seasonal north east state of Vermont; Valentine and Elder then went about growing their vision in the country, living at 'maximum arousal farm' and starting an annual 'Brattleboro' festival where peers and outsider artists such as free jazz man Paul Flaherty, out there vocalist Dredd Foole and hobo songster Michael Hurley could play among appreciative ears.
Unlike the early 70's musicians however, who often retreated into commercial non-existence; the new generation were able to keep in touch with their audience through the internet and CD-R's, many, many CD-R's. Cheap to produce and often adorned with hand made artwork, these frequent sonic communications were cheap and often limited to 30 - 100 copies, and you felt like you were experiencing the developments of the scene in real time almost.
MV & EE themselves had innumerable CD-R's on their Child of Microtones label behind them prior to this release. Dealing in a freeform electric country blues or 'lunar raga' MV & EE take the psychedelic explorations of The Grateful Dead or guitar wig out Neil Young to the next logical stage. Heavy analogue reverb and tremolo dominate the production MV termed Spectrasound.
Neil Young once said that during the recording of On The Beach he was ingesting 'honey slides', which are a combination of baked weed and honey, reportedly these were utterly debilitating and the band at Topanga would lie wiped out for days, stoned beyond belief. Well, if you imagine a situation where honey slides continued as the drug of choice, instead of cocaine and the 80's you might get close to the zoned out majesty of this record.
If you are one of those people who find it difficult to enjoy Neil Youngs thin falsetto voice, then you might struggle with MV's weedy refashioning; in the right mood though his laconic NY isms feel right.
Chunks of this record drift by in a blissful stoned revery. Loose interpretations of country blues standards by Charlie Patton, Mississippi John Hurt and Reverend Gary Davis are included. Anthem of the Cocola Y&T feature a lyric about a beautiful stoned girl; C.C. Pills is a horizontal Robert Johnson on mandrax. Raga drone & harmonica feature; the back up band for this outing play instruments called things like cumbus wood flute, yayli tambur, stuti box, electric jug, and mooncrotales. The second disc is even better, opening out over even wider vistas, Meditations on Payday has you looking for pots of honey to cook, you can smell the bongwater. MV's production emphasize tinkly sounds like brushed shells, a dog barks, someone puts up a shed, trip potential maximized. EE sings beautifully on Banty Rooster Blues.
The motherload is remarkable final track Death Don't Have No Mercy, a 23min journey which seems to start completely free and loose and gains form throughout it's duration, like they had smoked themselves sober.
The view from maximum arousal peak is sweet, long may it last.