the notes

Junior Boys — “Dull To Pause” — Begone Dull Care

The Junior Boys of forthcoming LP Beyond Dull Care are shaping up to be far cuddlier lads than the subzero boozehounds and morning-after nihilists of So This Is Goodbye. “Dull To Pause” bleeds from down-home (banjo?) noodling into a broken music box melody, on which sparkle and shine accumulates, erasing its vaguely folktronica origins.  The effect is one of a dilapidated carousel run backwards through time, polish overtaking grime and rust.  The lack of thump gives you a sense of just how preciously animated the album—named after a seminal abstract cartoon, no less—should be. Eventually, we do get the heavy snaps and clipped, staccato electronics we’ve come to expect, with one irresistibly smart addition: a slice of countryfied AM radio tone-bending that curves through it all, like the satisfying integral sign that threads gaps of knotty calculus.