JUNIOR BOYS – “Birthday”
So, context: The Junior Boys make skippy, snappy 2-step ala Dem 2 and filter it through chilly-the-most nuevo wavo romanticism. Fair enough.
“Take all this weight behind me, and let it go.” He sings this, and then the chimes or strings or xylophone or synth or whatever it is ripples in counterpoint: if this was a Chuck Eddy book he’d probably talk about how the sound of the ripple – light, upward, maybe even jaunty in a dejected sort of way – is the sound of that proverbial weight being let go. (Except Chuck Eddy would likely hate the Junior Boys. So it’d probably be a clumsy device to him. But pop music draws nearly ever emotional response it can from clumsy devices, and whether said clumsy device speaks to you (Mary J Blige style histrionics vs. drippy Pavement guitar Cream of Wheat) is largely a matter of taste. The creation of a NEW clumsy device is a claim to fame on par with the guy who first isolated a breakbeat or figured out that a drop D chord makes for good nu-metal.) It’s a sad song though, in the end, because he doesn’t sound relieved when he sings the line; maybe resigned, maybe exhausted. Relief will come in time, perhaps, when he realizes letting go of the weight was a good thing, that moving on doesn’t equal sinking like a stone. It’s a feeling I understand all too well right now, which is why I won’t be listening to this much as the weather turns cold.
Fucking indie records.