For those of you who are joining in because of my Amoeba patronization proclamation, this is not one of the new ones. Rather, it is old enough to be a treasure for 2009. It’s up there with Karen O’s comeback as well used within my personal stables of good music for the year. Maybe more so than others. Why? Well,

1. This is my year of the dance music revival. All I’ve been listening to as of late has been uptempo movers. I guess this is my way of handling a down economy.
2. I told you about my love affair with Sweden and pop, right? Just checking. Oh wait, they’re from Iceland. Same difference. And Robyn’s track is killer.
3. I needed it. I needed this. I needed something so deftly genre trouncing yet familiar that would move me in ways unexplainable and yet be easy enough to put on when I feel a Taebo workout is in order (you know you still have a tape sitting around. Don’t lie. Dude sold over a billion tapes. Check your old book bag.)

A lot of this preamble is to say that I thoroughly enjoyed this album. Much like Basement Jaxx,  Royksopp seem to find an elusive happy medium between pure dance/electronic  music and pop that finds a new way of expressing a point of view that you didn’t know you wanted but can’t let go. Their choice of vocalists are always spot on. Maybe I’m very aware of this since I spent the weekend testing out Tiesto’s latest creation. Now, there really isn’t much room for comparison but I did find that as a whole, I appreciated Junior‘s attention to detail over the bombastic nature of anthemic dance. You know, you don’t always have to be in a club or at the gym to want good synths.  Moreover, you can squeeze someone genuine songwriting in over looped drums if you try hard enough. Now, not all songs live up to this muster, but what effort was used I appreciated.  They sold this dream world and I bought it. Sometimes this dream world was a nasty one (Robots do hurt) and that sealed the album’s validity. Utterly listenable and undated.

And to top it off, they have a sense of humor.