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‘Junior’ is the third instalment from Norwegian duo Röyksopp, a hurdle where many artists fall down as ideas dry up. They sold over one million copies of their 2001 debut “Melody AM”, an album so good it sees almost everything they produce compared to it. This one fits in somewhere between their two previous releases and it is not bland with a huge amount of variety, and female vocal collaborations throughout.
The album opens in impressive fashion with ‘Happy up Here’, a jolly, bouncy track which is likely to get stuck in listener’s heads for sometime. It is followed by ‘The Girl and the Robot’, a pure electro-pop tune, the vocals really fail to fuse with the backing track resulting in a disjointed sound and ultimately disappointing track. ‘Vision One’ relies heavily on a swirling bass wave and has some nice 8-bit beeps and blips which accompany more impressive and suitable vocals.
Two of the major highlights of the album are the collaborations with Karin Dreijer famed with The Knife. Her sweet vocals are complimented perfectly by some captivating electro beats in ‘This Must Be It’. It seems like a match made in heaven, a presumption furthered by her other collaboration ‘Tricky Tricky’. It is a playful and upbeat affair which is full of gorgeous beats and synths, this coupled with Dreijer’s sweet vocals and catchy verses such as “is 6 afraid of 7? ‘Cause 7, 8, 9”, will mean this one will be stuck in your head. These two transcend anything Röyksopp have done to date.
There are a number of atmospheric and mellow instrumentals on the album too, like ‘Silver Cruiser’, ‘Royksopp Forever’, the later of which is an epic affair. Other tracks are more direct combinations of guest vocals and driven electronic beats such as ‘True to Life’, ‘You Don't Have a Clue’ and ‘Its What I Want’. However all the time these tracks are quiet mellow and chilled out, a fusion they seem adept at with ease.
Overall it’s a very varied album which has some fantastic tracks (‘This Must Be It’, ‘Tricky Tricky’ and ‘Happy up Here’), but one that also contains a number of suspect tracks which are quite obviously aimed at commercial success rather than appraisal of their musical talent. It appears the jury is still out on the musical direction of Röyksopp, we shall just have to wait and see what the future holds.
