The world’s premier maybe-could-have-been-in-an-alternate-reality boyband, Junior Boys have already released two fantastic records of dusky, bedroom-eyed synthpop and now they return for a third. I was a big fan of Last Exit and So This Is Goodbye but nothing on Begone Dull Care really seems to be reach those heights. Jeremy Greenspan and Matt Didemus continue to plough the exact same furrow but it doesn’t seem as fertile as before. Not to say that this is a bad record, because it isn’t. It’s just hard to get especially excited about it, because it sounds like their other albums and, unlike their other albums, doesn’t have anything like the same quality of pop hits on it. ‘Last Exit’ and ‘More Than Real’ and ‘Birthday’, ‘So This Is Goodbye’ had ‘Double Shadow’ and probably the best thing the duo have ever done or ever will do, ‘In The Morning’. Begone Dull Care seems to stretch for those same heights on the likes of ‘Parallel Lines’ and ‘Bits & Pieces’ but it doesn’t quite reach them.Or maybe the problem isn’t in the highlights. Maybe the problem is more in the lows. Junior Boys have produced a lot of songs I couldn’t tell you the title of before on their other records, and not for want of my having played them over and over again either. But whether or not they were memorable, they were never”¦ I guess, cloying. They’re too slow, or at least the vocals are, songs like ‘Sneak A Picture’ end up weighing you down like a wet rug.But, again, it’s not a bad record. It has its moments. And Junior Boys are still a fantastic act and if you like the idea of some glassy, detached, Canadian alternate-reality boyband then I’d get their other two albums as soon as you can because they’re ace. But do they still got it? Maybe not. 62%Junior Boys on Myspace