Junior Senior – Hey Hey My My Yo Yo
(Cutting Edge)

Denmark’s Junior Senior are famous for the 2003 hit “Move Your Feet” — you know, the one that had the vaguely Michael Jackson-ish vocals set to some strange video game-ish music? Yeah, it’s the one with that crazy animated video with the squirrel. Wasn’t that awesome?

Well, if that was all you ever heard from Junior Senior then you were missing out, as “D-D-Don’t Don’t Stop the Beat” was one of that year’s better albums, an album full of handclap inducing joycore, the stuff toothpaste commercials are made of. “Hey Hey My My Yo Yo” is even more of that same spirited electro-pop, and even more of the filler method of sing-sing-singing a song-song-song like this-this-this. Wow, even both album titles follow this trend.

J/S’s greatest strength with “Hey Hey My My Yo Yo” is that each song is distinctive despite having a similar pace throughout most of the album, and that almost each song is as good as the next. The lyrics aren’t exactly stupid but they are very simple and repetitive, enough to get in your head and stay there. Once in a while a good one liner pops up, such as their m.o. to provide “a parallel city where the music’s loud and the boys are pretty”.

There isn’t a song as blatantly obvious for a hit single/phenomenon like “Move Your Feet”, which in a way is good, as it opens the door for the skinny Junior and the bear-like Senior to prove to everyone that they are now indeed an album band. I don’t think “Take Your Time” (which features one of the B-52 girls on vocals) was the best choice for a single, but who cares?

Initially I was a little disappointed in this album for some reason. I guess I was having a bad day, or maybe my problem is there isn’t even one of their superfast almost J-pop style punk numbers here. I was dumb. This album is fun, and if you liked the last one, there’s absolutely no excuse not to pick this one up, whether for the import price or down the road when it gets a proper domestic release (later this year or early 2006) — Goon

SCORE:

Recommended If You Like: Basement Jaxx, Electric Six, The Go! Team, The Soft Pink Truth

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