Junior Boys - 'So This Is Goodbye' (Domino) Released 11/09/06

The problem with electro-pop is there's only two ways to go.  You can adopt a disdainful air and shoot for the intelligent, erudite and witty a la early Pet Shop Boys.  Or go the more flamboyant, eccentric route and drown it in bombast and an air of the ridiculous (Scissor Sisters, late Pet Shop Boys).  Perhaps unwisely on this their second album, the first for a newly rejuvenated Domino, Junior Boys try to buck this unwritten rule and pitch for some previously unimaginable hinterland where even Vangelis was a bit too out there.  Yes readers, because no-one demanded it, electro goes MOR.

It's most obvious on their cover of Frank Sinatra's 'When No One Cares', when they seem to aim for an ambient and hauntingly atmospheric sound to go with the melancholic subject matter but misfire hideously, resulting in a dispassionate and downright dull affair.  The more generous amongst you might question the sense of even attempting to do justice to anything in Old Blue Eyes' back catalogue, and that would be a fair point if the rest of the album didn't display the same frustrating level of disconnect.  Case in point, 'The Equaliser', mercifully not a tribute to Edward Woodward's post-Wicker Man late night TV exploits, is Fischerspooner without the filthy pomposity and, therefore, all the fun.

Therein lies the problem with the whole of 'So This Is Goodbye': at best it's a po-faced re-imagination of classic 80s synth pop.  And, as if intent on summoning the very essence of The Decade That Taste Forgot, Junior Boys deliver it packed with a misplaced sense of self-regard and devoid of any detectable irony or humour.  It may be a well meant and, admittedly, skilfully executed attempt to find a Blair-esque Third Way but, ultimately, 'So This Is Goodbye' proves to be a misguided and hollow exercise.  Avoid.