Review: Röyksopp – Junior (2009)
For a band with a made-up name and goofball album cover, Röyksopp’s newest has a blue note theme running conspicuously throughout. Oh, you might be fooled, even so much as to scoff at the previous statement, but once the shells are cracked and the omelette is reaching fruition, it becomes apparent that Junior may not be enough yin to match the yang-to-be.
To get right to the point: the trouble with Junior is that, as the first half of a double album (the other half being the forthcoming Senior, not surprisingly), it doesn’t fully capture the youthful and upbeat theme that it was probably should have. Senior is supposed to be the more downtempo of the two albums, and there’s no question that it will stand in pretty stark contrast to this flavor of material. However, with darker tracks like “Tricky Tricky,” and the fact that it starts with three polished gems and immediately dives sharply toward the dark waters of “This Must Be It” and “Röyksopp Forever,” Junior isn’t exactly a selling the danceable Röyksopp that flourishes so powerfully in the first bit of the album. Tempo observations aside, nothing after “Vision One” carries the same strong pop melodies, but rather beg further digging to fully unearth.
“Happy Up Here” doesn’t really go anywhere thematically, but as the lead-off track, it naturally has an alarmingly catchy hook, and, true to it’s title, is pleased as punch to serve as one the album’s best earworms. “Vision One,” another strong front-end track, is some of the most danceable music. It has the album’s funkiest makings, with a just-right beat and a synth line that stretches and crackles throughout, like some kind of futuristic sonic amoeba. If nothing else, Torbjørn Brundtland and Svein Berge came out with guns blazing.
Röyksopp’s “The Girl And The Robot.”
“The Girl And The Robot,” the album’s early peak, has one of the best marriages of arrangement and singer in 2009; Robyn’s inspired vocal makes pure anguish of the simple line: “don’t deny me / call me back / I’m so alone.” Though the sugar-coating on it portrays it as a simple love tune, it covers some heady, high-concept ground. It strikes a chord with The Flaming Lips’ masterpiece “One More Robot / Sympathy 3000-21,” and stakes a firm claim as one of the year’s best tracks.
Robyn’s lone track is fitted with the smartest and catchiest arrangement, and even alone it dominates side one and makes the second half seem plodding by comparison. Obviously the group is better for it — it’s nothing short of a terrific piece of music — but an electronica duo is only as good as its samples and singers. With the other three that guest here (Karin Driejer, Lykke Li, and Anneli Drecker), there are distinct seasonings that are a little unwieldy and difficult to grapple with. It has the unsettling effect of making the other genuinely great tracks seem merely good, and, by association, the good ones seem downright mediocre.
“True To Life” is probably the weakest here, as it occupies a sort of aural no-man’s-land, takes no risks and generally flounders around for the better part of six minutes. This isn’t all to say that one should write off the second half of Junior. In fact, there’s a fairly high level of thought put into most of the rest of the tracks, and the album on the whole is not entirely inconsistent with the rest of their catalogue. Driejer’s material is sugary and earnest, and succeeds if only by gusto alone. Meanwhile, Anneli Drecker holds her own with the aforementioned “Vision One,” and “You Don’t Have A Clue” is a charming throwback stunner, recalling ABBA in a really good way. The other instrumental effort, “Silver Cruiser,” jams so gently you’d swear you were drifting to sleep in the back seat after the party. There’s more than enough material here to satisfy.
The group’s critics are generally divided as to which of their albums is the strongest. Junior probably isn’t it. But it’s worth more than just a single listen, as it’s more of a grower album for the second half. The anticipation of the downbeat sister album, Senior, does still leave the door open to further interpretation when the double album is complete, but it seems for now that Röyksopp has at least half an album of blockbuster material, and some better-than-average go-betweens. Junior is, while not exceptional, an enjoyably modest triumph.
