So This Is Goodbye
- Junior Boys
- Band Name: Junior Boys
- Record Label: Domino
- Release Date: Sep 12, 2006
- Critic Score
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100Where Last Exit was indebted to the clubbier side of dance pop--with its tendency to wind songs around Dark's close-clipped beats--So This Is Goodbye is a post-aught pop record first and foremost, an elegant, spacious collection of flash-frozen R&B and soft disco laments.
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These songs are complicated robots.
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90So This Is Goodbye isn't just an improbable notch above 2004's Last Exit-- it's also among the best records you'll hear all year.
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90One moment I feel like I am listening to Underworld's frantic blast combined with the Blue Nile's slowly evolving elegance, the next it could be The Pet Shop Boys' sailing in the slip stream of Depeche Mode. I can't nail down the sound beyond the fact that it's breathtaking.
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90The icy qualities of Last Exit's synths are retained, but the old minimalism is certainly gone, and enough real warmth buoys these productions that songcraft actually develops.
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90This is dance music with unquestionable soul.
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88As on 2004's Last Exit, their arrangements are deftly drawn, precisely executed and drenched in pretense-free pop. [#22, p.96]
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You can't ask for much more from a sophomore album.
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While This is Goodbye does suffer, like Last Exit, from being a little too consistent (there's very little variation in tempo or arrangement, or theme for that matter), it's as cohesive a listening experience as almost any album I've heard this year.
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83Even more engaging than their debut, So This Is Goodbye is another amazing album from Junior Boys, and one of the better releases of the year.
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80Electronic pop rarely sounds this beautiful and human. [Sep 2006, p.136]
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Jeremy Greenspan and Matt Didemus depart completely from 2-step and late-'90s Timbaland twitter, polishing their sound to such an extent that absolutely no detectable scuffs are left.
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80Here Greenspan takes a more direct approach, showcasing his feel for melody and melancholy to brilliant effect. [Oct 2006, p.125]
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In the end, Junior Boys' improved skills at constructing pop songs within their fantastic sonic template is more than enough to make So This Is Goodbye one of my favorite releases of 2006 so far.
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So This Is Goodbye displays an impressive maturation on the part of Junior Boys leading man Jamie Greenspan.
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80This release is comparable to 2004's stunning "Last Exit" in that every song has its own merits yet feels part of a greater whole.
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The results may not be as jarring as its predecessor - the excitement of their original experimentation is gone - but ultimately they're more satisfying, indicative of a duo much more comfortable with their vision.
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80The Boys make earnest, delicate and occasionally gloomy synth-pop, but they want the pain to be danceable. [Nov 2006, p.161]
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80So This is Goodbye is even more measured and meticulous than Last Exit, but so skilled a songwriting team Greenspan and Didemus have become, that every carefully-planned note packs a wallop, the starkness continuing to masterfully mask some of the most soulful Canadian music to come out in years.
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80Furnished with seductive melodies, dry beats, translucent tonality and a variety of bouncing electronic arpeggios, So This Is Goodbye is filled with pure synth-pop oxygen.
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In the 1980s, artists such as Bronski Beat and David Sylvian used a similar sonic palette. But there's a distance to Greenspan's perfectly constructed grooves and well-modulated lyrics that falls somewhere between ironic and mournful.
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70It's a beautiful record. [Oct 2006, p.112]
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Heartfelt but sometimes overly polite.
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Junior Boys' brand of synthpop can't help sounding rooted in the '80s, and with Scritti Politti and thePet Shop Boys recently resurfacing to scratch the same itch, there may be no burning need for what Manitobans Jeremy Greenspan and Matthew Didemus do. Which doesn't mean they don't do it well.
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The Boys are still presenting themselves as an emotionally sensitive duo, but the smoothness pulls the urgency out of some of their problems.
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So This is Goodbye often proves too single-mindedly hip and aloof for it's own good. [#15]
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So This is Goodbye is the perfect example of how aiming for perfection in music can end in alienation.
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60The sonic palette here is just so relentlessly perfect that, for me, it becomes constricting and cloying.
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60Much will be familiar to JBs devotees... but this time their MOR predilections are more pronounced. [Oct 2006, p.100]
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There are snoozers like the title track... but there are also pretty, narcotically alluring cuts like "FM." [21 Sep 2006, p.86]
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60A pretty, if sterile, album.
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30Greenspan turns the pathos of 2004's Last Exit into nearly intolerable bathos, with the beats now noticeably dragging. [Oct 2006, p.98]
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 23 out of 26
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Mixed: 2 out of 26
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Negative: 1 out of 26
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LeeB.10
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MycroftW.10No doubt, if you buy one record from 2006, make sure it's this one
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bobbyk9Syth-pop perfection. An aside: why Spin is still considered relevant, especially on Metacritic is beyond me.