Junior Boys: Bigger than their name
Written by:Ronak Ghorbani
Date: May 25, 2009

Hamilton’s electronic duo Junior Boys released their newest album Begone Dull Care in March. The band has been releasing singles since 2003 and was nominated for a Polaris Music Prize in 2007. Besides playing major festivals like Coachella, the duo has impressed crowds in Europe and South America. Before heading off to France to promote the new disc, Jeremy Greenspan, the singer, guitarist and beat maker, talked to Muted Magazine about the album’s significance and influences.

Muted Magazine: Your new album is coming out in two weeks, are you excited?

Jeremy Greenspan: Yeah! I am excited. I don’t know I guess I’m probably more nervous than excited. I always get uptight when an album comes out - I think it’s the end of my career of music. I think maybe there are lots of people like that get worked up.

MM: What did you do before music?

JG: I was student, I went to McMaster. I did a [literature] degree at Mac and then when I was finished I applied to grad school and then the music thing completely took over. At a certain point I decided to put my real life on hiatus; that was like eight years ago now. I sort of wanted to do graduate work in cognitive science.

MM: Are you planning on going back to school?

JG: I hope not. If I went back to school it’d be because music didn’t work out… maybe I’ll go to adult learning, somewhere I can go to cook. I don’t know if I’d want to go back to go to school again.

MM: Junior Boys has a pretty eclectic sound. What music influences you?

JG: I grew up not listening to punk music. When I was a kid I used to listen to The Misfits. I [also] grew up listening to the dance music.

MM: Why is the album named Begone Dull Care?

JG: It’s named after a Canadian movie from the 1950s. It’s basically an animation by Norman McLaren. I [got] really into his work so much I was inspired to write songs loosely about him. It’s kind of a homage.

MM: What were his animations like?

JG: Sort of like experimental animation. He used to take the film and draw directly onto the film, making little scratches and used experimental musicians as well drawing wave forms on the soundtrack.

It was really intricate and intricate work that took a long time. It’s like electronic music, sitting there and painstakingly going over details. So that’s why I felt a kinship with him.

MM: That’s a pretty interesting influence. So what can fans expect from your third release?

JG: They’re still pop songs with melodies but I always think the general public knows what’s popular. [The general public] can be a lot more experimental than people give them credit for… people are a lot more sophisticated and I think we can do a lot of experiment in the context of pop music.

MM: Junior Boys have been labelled as pop, electronica, dance etc. Which genre do you think best fits?

JG: I don’t like to consider my band as anything. I don’t have ideas of what scene we’re part of. One of the nice things of saying pop music is it doesn’t really mean anything. It could conjures up certain images, people might think it means Back Street Boys or The Beatles but it doesn’t mean anything, there’s no rules and so forth.

MM: How long did it take to make this album?

JG: It took a long time, almost a year and a half which is quite a long time to make a record especially with eight songs. It’s partly because we were touring quite exhaustively and the other member relocated himself to Germany to write the album. We had to go back and forth between continents.

One of the great things is you don’t have a nine-to-five job; I didn’t clock in and out. We were quite steadily working at it. I have a studio in Hamilton and Matt has one in Berlin.

MM: You first started getting attention through your remixes, specifically of the band Caribou but now you’re writing your own material. Which do you like better?

JG: First we did a couple of remixes after our first record. I don’t really like doing them very much I prefer doing my own [songs].

MM: Why do you use live instruments during performances if you already have them recorded electronically?

JG: I think we felt that it wasn’t live enough and I think people felt that. So we decided to [play instruments] when we play live…When we’re doing a live show it’s not like what we’re doing in the studio. In the studio we’re sitting, making decisions. When we’re live playing key board and drums we’re doing that for the first time sort to speak. We had to decide on what we thought people might want to hear. People prefer to watch you play something rather than tinker on your computer.

MM: I read that Junior Boys started out in a bedroom?

JG: The band started in my old bedroom…When I first started I bought the best computer you could buy. It was when we started junior boys in ’99 you couldn’t’ do anything it was a two gigabyte hard drive. When Matt and I started making music, when we were teenagers, I had an Atari computer and had a sampler that held 3 seconds.

MM: It seems like the electronic/dance scene is getting international attention with Thunderheist and Caribou. How does it feel to be part of this new wave?

JG: I don’t feel like we’re part of that [wave]. It’s been difficult with us; we’re outsiders a little bit. We don’t make very fast up beat dance music. I don’t really feel very affinity for a lot of people making dance music these days. I tend to listen to slower dance music than what’s popular now. I guess because of that, we’re not part of a collective scene. I don’t really want to feel a part of any scene that’s why I choose to live in Hamilton, to keep a low key.

Junior Boys are slow dancing from the States to Europe until mid-June. However, they will make a short stop in Canada on May 9 in Montreal and May 10 in Ottawa.