Junior Boys lacked musical maturity

Author: Jordan Nassar

Junior Boys? Are you sure? They look more like senior men. But beyond the fact that these older-than-everyone-thought electro-artists failed to draw much of a crowd, their concert at Higher Ground in Burlington left me disappointed, to say the least. If the venue hadn't had Magic Hat on tap, I don't know if I would have made it to the end of the show. I persevered, however, and left with yet another example of a certain little-talked-about issue in music today: the recording artist and their place in the performance world.

Before we get to all of that, though, let's talk about Junior Boys' set. They played all the songs that we all love off of their newest LP, So This Is Goodbye, as well as my two personal favorite tracks from their previous album Last Exit, "Birthday" and "More than real." All of this was good except for the fact that it sounded completely different from their album. And not in the good, creative and professional way. I appreciate a different performance style as much as the next person, but the over-rock-icized versions of the songs we love seemed clumsy, and at times members of the band came off as unnecessary. I just personally didn't see the use of a live drummer drumming over pre-recorded beats. I also didn't see the point in the lead singer playing guitar along with a prerecorded bass-line, or the bass with a prerecorded guitar melody.

The albums that Junior Boys have put out are works of art. They consistently write musically complex and intelligent beats, with good-enough lyrics to go right along. I have listened to So This Is Goodbye countless times, as a lot of Middlebury students sem to hae done judgin from the charts at WRMC. Yet only at the concert did I realize that there is scarcely a raw guitar or bass line on the album. The drums on the album are also electronically programmed, but honestly, that's the way I like it. Junior Boys' albums are electronic music, and yes, it is hard to perform a programmed beat live.

Standing at the concert were: drums overpowering the rest of the instruments, the keyboard player looking bored out of his mind - not to mention not actually playing the intricate parts - those were prerecorded - and the lead singer going through the songs, offering neither pizzazz nor personality. Most of the time I was thinking that I would rather listen to the album and I basically was waiting for the concert to end. If I hadn't heard them before this concert, I would not have bought their CD. A concert is supposed to make a band more popular, whereas, when I left, I did not run to the car to put on their CD. When I left, all I needed was some drive-thru and to get back to Middlebury.

This leads me to the moral of the story. A band made up of amazing performers is great. There are many bands that you must see live to fully appreciate, their albums not doing them justice. I like to refer to these as "bands." There are also recording artists: musicians who are gifted, truly amazing at recording an album - writing and editing their songs, arranging them, and perfecting them, making real works of art. These recording artists produce the CDs that you listen to so much that the CD gets messed up and you have to buy a second one. Both are equally prestigious forms of artists, they are just different, and I would advise recording artists to perform less and record more. I flat-out did not want to hear their CD after their concert, making me think that perhaps they shouldn't perform. So, that was goodbye.