April Fools Day 2009 was kind of special. My friend Travis and I had decided to attend the Junior Boys/Max Tundra show at the Pike Room a while back. The day of, our friend Dan decided to join us, plus I won two free tickets from Eat This City (that blog I have a very love/hate relationship with. Perhaps Jay was trying to make up for the debacle he pulled with me back in December?
Anyway, after some Golden Wall Chinese food in Ypsi, we made the trek out to Pontiac and arrived not long after doors had opened. The venue was pretty empty and thankfully continued to fill up and was fairly packed by the time Junior Boys went on.
But, first was the wonderful enigma, Max Tundra. I had watched his A>D>D segment on Pitchfork TV, and though his drumming was less than desirable, I could tell he is obviously talented in all other facets of his music. Thankfully, he didn't have a drum kit in tow and focused on his synthesizers, vocals and dancing. His dancing, by the way, was absolutely hysterical. When he wasn't playing synth or singing, he was performing these intense, staggering and jittery moves that I couldn't help but crack up at. It was truly a sight to see.
That Tundra's songs were really good was an added bonus. Dan appropriately described them as playful. This guy did not seem to take himself seriously whatsoever and that works really well for his songs, which are complex, funky pop songs that require a short attention span. One of my favorite things in the world is having no expectations for a live performance I'm about to see and then being completely blown away by it. This most definitely occured here.
Junior Boys had a tough act to follow, and though they weren't quite the level of performers that Max Tundra was, they mostly succeeded. I am a newer fan of theirs and it was nice to see them pull there smooth and sexy electronic pop off live, especially with a drummer on stage with them which added a whole new dimension. The bookends of there set were, without question, THE highlights, opening with "Hazel" (my favorite track from the just released Begone Dull Care) and closing with what I think is the best Junior Boys song, "In the Morning" from 2006's So This is Goodbye. Aside from "The Equalizer," which is a GREAT song title, FYI, it was hard for me to differentiate between what songs were on which album, thanks to my new fandom. They were right on, though. Jeremy Greenspan's vocals were perfect (and he looked like a dad who had just woken up and thrown on the first clothes he found, which was hilarious and ironic to me), the sound was really good and the drummer was tight and creative. Also, a good portion of the crowd were dancing their asses off (Travis was worried of getting blasted by a certain emotional dancer in front of him), which though I didn't really participate, was nice to see since that never happens in Detroit.
I figured this would be a good show and I was not wrong. It was worth the trip (and would have been worth the $14 ticket) to see two really great electronic pop acts from outside of the US.
