Junior Boys

As I suspected, the sound at the show last night turned out to be not quite as precise and bright as on the records. The last three songs were all killer, though. "Birthday" has a complex, dense rhythm, but it's pretty spare so they carried it off well. "FM" has many layers of sound but it's also very slow and not as focused on beats as most of their other tracks, so that also worked well. For an encore they chose "Under the Sun," which surprised me because it doesn't sound like much on record. One touch I've liked the last two times I've seen Junior Boys play, though, is Jeremy Greenspan's guitar, much more present live, and it really changes some songs, especially "Under the Sun" where he added startling sheets of guitar noise--an unexpected but delightful touch for the end of the set.

To start the set, Greenspan read derogatory and hilariously gay-themed comments from his laptop about "In the Morning," which apparently is the free single on iTunes this week. As expected the crowd found ate it up. A few choice quotes:

"The song seems to be similar in the rock/electric fusion of Queen's Radio-Ga-Ga."
"It sounded like a messed up Britney Spears song."
"I would give it a -1 rate if I could."
"I would rather listen to someone ripping apart live children."