Even with the Vegas-size buffet of sounds that inform the music of Junior Senior, I wouldn't have pegged them as Neil Young fanatics. When the Danish duo came dancing across the water with their giddy 2003 debut D-D-D-Don't Stop the Beat, their message was one of gleeful disinhibition, hopscotching their way through any genre that falls under the wide umbrella of "dance music." Neil Young? He's more into songs about apocalypses, overdoses, and genocides.
Nevertheless, indie rock refugees Jesper "Junior" Mortensen and Jeppe "Senior" Laursen invoke the Chief Rustie's ode to Johnny Rotten as the title to their sophomore effort, the crucial addition of a "yo yo" bending the original song to fit their mission statement: It's better to freak out than to mope away. Sadly, there are no soul-funk-disco-garage reworkings of "Like a Hurricane" to be found on Hey Hey My My Yo Yo, though there are certainly echoes of the pure, simple joy found in the famous one-note solo of "Cinnamon Girl". You see, Junior Senior loves to dance, yeah. Yeah? Yeah.
Those who never saw Junior Senior, with their sexual preference goofing and affected stuttering, as anything more than a gimmick might be surprised they've issued a second record, much less one that improves on their debut. But skeptics be damned that's just what Hey Hey My My Yo Yo is, an improvement and distillation of the duo's sound. It might not have an icebreaking single like "Move Your Feet", but it's much more consistent. Chalk it up to Junior and Senior easing off the genre promiscuity and settling on a sound that shopping-sprees its way through dance-floor history: The sequined strings of disco, the driving guitars of funk, the shout-along backing vocals of girl-group Motown, the dopey-rhyme silliness of early rap, and handclaps, handclaps, handclaps.
After graciously thanking us, Jay-Z style, for buying our album, "Hip Hop a Lula" serves as the thesis statement for their proud new musical cocktail, right down to the evolution-charting name of the song. Trading in hokey rhymes ("Take me down to the parallel city/ Where the music's loud and the boys are pretty"), the track's aspect ratio widens out to Go! Team-like cop-show fanfares and violin crescendos then shrinks down to crisp, percussive electro, all in the time it takes to microwave popcorn.
The Danes also spruce up their sound with guest vocalists-- female singers recruited from other bands, and the band's own Velvelettes-- who appear on the mic as often as Junior and Senior themselves. Grrl-group Le Tigre appears on no less than five tracks, returning the favor for the awesome Junior Senior remix of "Nanny Nanny Boo Boo" currently working the DJ circuit. The Tigres sound like they haven't had so much fun since their politics eclipsed their playfulness, whether singing backup on "We R the Handclaps" or enthusiastically dueting with the leads on the crisp synth-funk of "Can I Get Get Get" or the delirious "Dance Chance Romance". "Take My Time" takes an even more direct nostalgia-mining route, recruiting Cindy Wilson and Kate Pierson from the B-52s for some cross-generational party-rock.
Throughout Hey Hey My My Yo Yo, Junior Senior repeatedly thwart the impulse to perceive them as disposable or disco-era re-enactors, resisting the novelty label at every step. It's easy to forget that underneath the often silly lyrics lies a great deal of musicality, with the band tackling the Cinerama sounds of disco and Motown accurately and playfully. But most importantly, Junior Senior have fun and are funny without ever falling back on a wink; like the Darkness, their passion for neglected genres is too infectious to scoff at even when they plainly, earnestly proclaim "I Like Music" on the album's best track. Such a statement may not carry the hipster cache of "rock and roll will never die," but it's no less clichéd, and certainly just as true.
