Junior Boys: Soundtrack to a Crowd

Friday's Junior Boys show was pretty much what you saw in the preview post video from the West Hollywood show. Three guys on stage (although the drummer was barely visible way in the back), playing beautiful songs that melded rock and electronic elements ("electro-rock" as some will call it, but more Cure than Ladytron). If you actually watched the video rather than minimizing the window to listen, you will have noticed that there wasn't really much to see, as the band members were a bit...lacking in stage presence. Not a lack of confidence or musical skill, but Friday's show on-stage amounted to a lot of "nothing to see here," leaving you to find other places to land your gaze.

Junior Boys are on tour in support of their latest disc, "So This Is Goodbye," which has been getting a lot of great press and is already poised to end up on many "Best" lists at the end of the year. The performance matched the album's mood, a slow-burner rather than an explosion like the previous night's Man Man show. It proved a mellow start to the weekend.

We touched on the lack of stage presence, but that somehow didn't take away from the overall experience. They arrived onstage joking about the negative comments left on their iTunes single of the week. That amounted to the most engaging portion of the Junior Boys visually, as the rest of the show was more about the music. Luckily, the show featured some wonderful people watching. For Seattlest, there was the drunk guy hitting on all women within a ten foot radius, stumbling up to them, making awkward introductions before they'd find an excuse to walk away. Then there was the drunk girl who was enjoying more of a party than the music was providing, who kept our attention for most of the show with her energetic flailing (will she fall over or will stay upright?). We send an anonymous thanks goes out to this pair (who met and flirted for a bit) for providing the visuals to the Junior Boys' soundtrack. Without you, we'd have had a much more critical impression of the show. For those of you in other cities yet to be visited on this tour, we hope your drunkards provide you with the same service.

Image from flickr user serene_d