The Junior Varsity

Cinematographic

Written by: TL on 11/08/2007 00:18:38

The Junior Varsity are a bunch of clever assholes. They have clever artwork, clever song titles, clever lyrics and all this reeks of indie pretentiousness cleverness is cleverly disguising that their music is cleverly disguised to look like something else than what it really is, namely...! ... ???

Okay, it's official, The Junior Varsity have in "Cinematographic" released an album that is persistent in repulsing my attempts at stuffing it into a nice square genre-box. In other words ladies and gents, we're dealing with a true real life genre-defying record, so let's hear a random applause! The reason I'm not shitting myself to praise it is because it makes my job so damn hard. I simply do not know how to describe it or whom to compare it too! Well, I guess their songs are mostly driven by subtle guitar riffs and emo-ish vocal work (no, no screaming) but that's also pretty much everything that goes for all of them. Garage/indie-ish opener "I Went Blind" is followed by the jagged and attitude filled morphling of a song that is "The SKY!", then "Wunderdrug" changes the style back again before "St. Louis" acts out with its up beat danceability, "The Greatest" hints at Biffy Clyro scale semi-epicism and by track 7 "Memory Made Easy" we've also been treated to an instrumental track that's composed only of pianos and strings that sound well.. medieval?

"Cinematographic" is annoying me with the way it eludes clear perception, but in order to present you with something that you can actually relate to, I can say that songs like "The SKY!", "The Greatest" and "Lungs" are catchy to the border of contaminating and they'll haunt your "Recently played" list for a good while, as they're still doing mine, and if for nothing else this record is enjoyable simply because the novelty of its quirkiness is downright diehard. I would give it 7½ if there wasn't this bugging voice in my head telling me "You know you're gonna regret it when you finally understand it and didn't give it an 8", so here you go, I succumbed to the voices in my head. The reward for the album that officially drove me insane is:

8

Download: The SKY!, The Greatest, Lungs, I Went Blind
For the fans of: Gatsby's American Dream, Park
Listen: MySpace

Release Date 19.06.2007
Victory Records

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