Pitchfork

With So This Is Goodbye's goodness bleeding on well into 2007-- what with the iTunes session, the remix EP, the Goodbye Special Edition (which collects the former two, plus the album), and the touring hysteria-- it comes as no surprise to find that alpha Junior Boy Jeremy Greenspan is eager to get cracking on some new jingles.

"I like touring a lot," Greenspan told Pitchfork recently, "but, you know, you get really, really itchy to start making more music."

Greenspan and partner-in-groove Matt Didemus were swept up in the throes of a North American tour for the past couple months, but Greenspan said, "now that we've settled down, we've got a lot of ideas going. So I'm really eager, basically, to start working in earnest."

Junior Boys haven't completed anything yet, but pieces of the puzzle are slowly falling into place. "What we're doing right now is amassing a whole bunch of sketches-- this is how we work. We come up with loops and little ideas for songs. Right now I'm really happy with some of the stuff I've started. It's even more pop than our last album."

As for just what that pop puzzle will sound like? "It's sort of too early to say," according to Greenspan. "The thing that's kind of exciting for me is when we did So This Is Goodbye, I sort of knew what the album was going to be before we started, because a lot of the songs were already written. But now it's different...I feel sort of like I did when I was much younger, making music where you have no idea what you're about to do and you're just playing around. It's much more fun."

"In a year's time I'm going to have another album, and I have no idea what it's going to be."

Speaking of those younger music-making years, Greenspan shared a few words about his high school Battle of the Bands entry, in which he went toe-to-toe with a young Dan Snaith's P-Funk-derived Cro-Nasal Sapiens.

Greenspan's act was "space-rock, Hawkwind-esque. You know, Moog synthesizers and delay pedal guitar. You can imagine what a 15-year-old is busting out with that kind of [set-up]."

Meanwhile, "Dan's band had a 30-piece funk orchestra doing Kool & the Gang covers and stuff like that," Greenspan revealed. "He won that one. He always wins. Whenever it's me versus him, he always wins!"

While he wouldn't divulge the name of his own high school band, Greenspan added, "funny enough, that band was actually me and Matt Didemus, who's [now] the other guy in Junior Boys."

And he and Snaith are still pals despite this apparent rivalry. Indeed, Greenspan appears on Snaith's forthcoming longplayer as Caribou, Andorra (out August 21 on Merge), on a song he co-wrote titled "She's the One". Jeremy also lent some vocals to a handful of new tracks from Morgan Geist. One, "Most of All", popped up on an Environ 12" last year; the others seem poised to appear on a forthcoming Geist full-length.

While the band recoups and toys with the new material, they're also preparing for yet another tour, one that has them spanning the European festival circuit in June and July-- not to mention hitting the Pitchfork Music Festival on July 15 . And while the present incarnation of Junior Boys cleans up live, it took a while to reach this point.

Explained Jeremy: "We thought, 'Well we could be one of those bands that plays little theaters and does slow sets, or we could be the club band.' And everybody thought it was better to be a club band and do that. In order to do that we tried to make our sets as upbeat as possible-- which with us was kind of hard because we aren't the most intensely physical, fast, upbeat kind of group. [But] there's nothing worse than playing a slow song over the top of conversations and stuff like that."

That upbeat approach is perhaps best exemplified by frequent set-closer and Last Exit standout "Under the Sun", which soars to new dynamic heights in the live setting. "It's just one of those natural things," said Greenspan. "I think when we first played it live it sounded pretty much like it did on the album. Then, every time we played, we just got a little more bombastic with it-- so now it's finally turned into the closest thing we have to a headbanger track."

Indeed, the Junior Boys' label Domino will press "Under the Sun" onto a one-sided 12", due out June 11, the same day as Special Edition. Scoop it up, spin it at the next house party, and then watch "Under the Sun" take on new levels of irony at the Pitchfork Music Festival.

Greenspan's psyched, even as he braces for the inevitable jet-lag: "It's going to be funny because we're playing all these festivals in Europe, then we fly in to Chicago from Europe to play the Pitchfork Festival, then we fly out the next day to go back to Europe to play some more festivals...I think we're going to find the whole experience pretty psychedelic."

Junior Boys dates:

06-07 London, Ontario - Call the Office
06-08 Toronto, Ontario - The Mod Club
06-09 Hamilton, Ontario - Pepper Jack Cafe
06-16 Barcelona, Spain - Sonar Festival
06-20 Helsinki, Finland - Tavastia
06-22 Warsaw, Poland - Punkt
06-23 Saint Petersburg, Russia - Stereoleto Festival
06-26 Arendal, Norway - Hove Festival
06-27 Malmö, Sweden - KB
06-28 Gothenburg, Sweden - Accelerator Festival
06-30 Stockholm, Sweden - Accelerator Festival
07-06 Amsterdam, Netherlands - London Calling @ 5 Days Off Festival
07-07 Dublin, Ireland - Oxegen Festival
07-15 Chicago, IL - Union Park (Pitchfork Music Festival) *
07-21 London, England - Lovebox Weekender

* with the New Pornographers, Stephen Malkmus, De La Soul, Of Montreal, Jamie Lidell, the Field, the Sea and Cake, Klaxons, Nomo, Deerhunter, the Ponys, Menomena, Craig Taborn's Junk Magic, Fred Lonberg-Holm's Lightbox Orchestra, Cadence Weapon, the Cool Kids, Brightblack Morning Light