A Chilly Dance

Junior Boys: Begone Dull Care (Domino): By the Junior Boys' standards, Begone Dull Care is almost tropical in its warmth. By anyone else's, this is dance music colored in shades of metallic gray. Since it borrows heavily from soul, disco and house, maybe there's a muted sepia in the palate somewhere. Singer Jeremy Greenspan's attempts at soulful vocals are soulful in the way many British new wave singers were, which is to say, not very. But performing as an uncertain, fundamentally reserved lover man gives the songs heart, anyway, and the songs are uniformly engaging. More impressive is that the hooks don't wear out despite the songs' usually five-plus minute lengths.

Favorite Song of the Day

Today I'm nutty about the Junior Boys' stripped-down take on '80s pop-funk on "Hazel" from its new album, Begone Dull Care. They test their funk to see how few notes it needs to groove and find that a few properly timed hold-and-release chords do most of the work.