Summary: Junior Boys are Canadian duo Jeremy Greenspan and Matt Didemus. A pair of mysterious 12 inch singles of smart, crisp electro hooks heralded their arrival in 1995. After a misspent year in the Midlands of England, where he immersed himself in the burgeoning UK dance culture of the time, Greenspan had retreated to his blue collar hometown of Hamilton, Ontario with a head full of beats, where, with original partner Johnny Dark, he set about writing the debut Junior Boys album, ‘Last Exit’, finished after Dark’s departure with mix engineer Didemus. Delivering on the promise of those early tracks, ‘Last Exit’ was in the long tradition of sonically rich pop that blends emotionally charged songcraft with experimental form; uniting New Order’s depth of feeling with Timbaland’s stuttering beats and the 2-Step genre’s digital bass, to astonished critical acclaim. Today, Junior Boys aren’t so much myth as a revelation. Greenspan and Didemus re-emerge in 2006 with a pop statement that is being heralded as one of the albums of the year. ‘So This Is Goodbye’ is a work that exhibits a confident mix of focus, clarity and ambition. Leaving behind the dense beats of ‘Last Exit’ songs such as the upbeat single ‘In the Morning’ and their cover of Frank Sinatra’s ‘When No One Cares’ draw upon their love of the classic pop of artists like David Sylvian and Bryan Ferry, fusing their distinct brand of melancholia with a sonic distillation of the last twenty five years of electronic pop, into one contemporary album.
