Danish Dynamite

11/09/2003 3:00 AM, Yahoo! Music
Lyndsey Parker

Every year or so, a quintessential good-time smash single comes along to remind us all of how wonderful it is to be alive. We all recognize it the instant we first hear it--it's the kind of song that sticks with Crazy Glue-like tenacity in the subconscious after a single listen, and doesn't wear out its welcome even after it pops up on the airwaves every hour on the hour for 15 consecutive days. The kind of fun, frivolous, fluffy summertime singalong that causes us to belt the chorus at the top of our lungs while driving with the top down, blissfully unaware of the odd looks we're attracting from our fellow commuters. The kind of party anthem that illuminates request-line switchboards at radio stations around the globe, and packs dance floors to such beyond-maximum capacity that keyed-up dancers everywhere, from Ibiza raves to Poughkeepsie karaoke bars, resort to boogie-ing on tabletops. The kind of song that prompts people from all walks of life to immediately exclaim, "Now that's what I call music!"

Pink's "Get The Party Started," Nelly's "Hot In Herre," Blur's "Song 2," Chumbawamba's "Tubthumpin'," Smash Mouth's "Walking On The Sun," Daft Punk's "One More Time," and Destiny's Child's "Independent Women" are but a few examples of this boundary-busting, booty-shaking phenomenon. And now we must add Junior Senior's absolutely irresistible "Move Your Feet"--imagine Stevie Wonder and a pre-surgery Michael Jackson jamming with the B-52's and the Chemical Brothers on a chickenscratch-guitar-laden set of Abba and Motown covers in a gay Copenhagen discothèque circa 1982--to that illustrious list.

Yes, the rainbow-bright dynamic duo of "Junior" (aka heterosexual waif Jesper Mortensen) and "Senior" (aka the openly gay--and by "gay," we mean both homosexual and extremely happy--Jeppe Laursen) have arrived from out of nowhere (or more specifically, from Jutland, Denmark) to rightfully claim the Feelgood Hit Of The Summer Award for 2003. And judging from the massive, dancing-in-the-aisles reaction their song received when it was piped over the PA system at KIIS FM's recent Wango Tango Festival (a Los Angeles top 40 radio concert headlined by Justin Timberlake and Christina Aguilera), "Move Your Feet" is inspiring teenyboppers to, well, move their feet--in droves.

"It's kind of strange for us that this song broken through, because we still think it sounds kind of quirky compared to Justin Timberlake or all the other slick, well-produced pop stuff," muses Junior at he sits with his sidekick in a conference room at Atlantic Records' Burbank, California headquarters. Despite his Nordic dreamboat looks and eyes the color of a Louie-Bloo Otter Pop, he doesn't look like a top 40 pop star, instead sporting the typical indie-rock look of ratty army jacket, checkered slip-on Vans sneaker, scrawny pipe-cleaner legs in holey hand-me-down jeans, and choppy scarecrow hair that hasn't seen a comb in days. Senior is even more of a sight: a rotund, bear-like bundle of joy decked out in a bling-bling metallic gold visor emblazoned with his name (a true headwear fashionista, Senior is to visors as Fred "Rerun" Berry is to red berets) and a denim vest plastered with rhinestone pins, including a Thanksgiving-themed brooch that proudly announces his status as the "World's #1 Turkey Taster." And since this is Junior Senior's first-ever in-person U.S. interview, they don't offer any of the pat, rehearsed answers or exhibit any of the jaded diva attitude of their pop peers. Instead, they seem genuinely excited and more than a little bewildered to be discussing their music in the glamorous entertainment capital of Los Angeles, where they'll be rocking the Sunset Strip's world-(in)famous Viper Room this evening. After the gig, they even hope to get in some Tinsel Town sightseeing by visiting another Strip landmark, the Saddle Ranch, a cheesy Hollywood rodeo bar recently immortalized by reality-show TV queen Anna Nicole Smith when she straddled its Urban Cowboy-style mechanical bull.

"The song that's out there now, 'Move Your Feet,' is actually a demo," Junior continues, both bemused and amused. "But we really like that it sounds that way. It proves what we believe in: the power of a good song."

"It is quite rough, quite lo-fi; we would never have thought of it being on top 40 stations," Senior chuckles in agreement. "And that makes us proud, because this song is not done for a specific targeted market, it's not done because we wanted to make a hit--it's just very much us, and it works!"

Yes, it works wonderfully. In fact, Junior Senior's debut album, D-D-Don't Don't Stop The Beat, which was recorded in one whirlwind week, is the perfect party record of the year, vividly capturing the twosome's seat-of-the-thrift-store-pants spirit. The party gets started right away on the album's opening declaration of intent, "Go Junior Go Senior," the moment Senior shouts out (a la the Sweet's "Ballroom Blitz"), "Are you there, Junior?" Junior calls back gleefully, "I'm heeeeerrre, Senior!," and suddenly synthetic handclaps, cowbells, Pong-era video game bleeps, Link Wray guitar riffs, and boisterous unison chants of "yeah-yeah-yeah!" explode in all directions like Day-Glo specks of audio confetti, as our beloved, be-visored MC bellows in his endearingly stilted English, "We wanna take you to outer space/We wanna shake you, the human race/We wanna take you to the moon and back/We wanna give you a heart attack!" with enough pep to make the Justin Timberlake sound like Leonard Cohen on a Xanax bender.

And the momentum never lets up throughout the disc's 11 odes to dancing, dancing, dancing. The Polynesian-disco tour de force that is "Shake Your Coconuts" conjures up Coppertone-scented fantasy images of Wham! performing their minor 1983 spring break hit "Club Tropicana" down at the Love Shack (as for such Wham! comparisons, Senior theorizes, "Well, George Michael was into black '60s music, like we are, and I guess when you're trying to do that and you're white, you end up sounding like Wham!"); "Rhythm Bandits" brings to mind the Bay City Rollers cranking out a rousing version of the American Bandstand theme song alongside Meat Loaf's chest-heaving female backup singers; and the gay-vs.-straight garage-rock duet "Chicks & D-cks" sounds like the house band from Happy Days moonlighting at an S&M biker bar on their night off from their regular job at Arnold's burger joint. And last but certainly not least, the grand finale, "White Trash," is a psychedelic punk-rock throwdown in which Junior and Senior announce, with a surprising amount of conviction and cojones, their plan to follow in the rock 'n' roll footsteps of the Cramps, Rock Steady Crew, Nancy Sinatra, the Ramones, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Sonny & Cher, and the New York Dolls--which they somehow actually manage to do within the song's breathless two and a half minutes. The album rushes by all too quickly, clocking in at just barely over half an hour, but listeners don't have to wait very long for another Pavlovian pop fix, for--in a pure-genius move that Senior jokingly dubs the duo's "evil marketing scheme"--just as "White Trash" is winding down, the whole album starts all over again, complete with Senior once again shouting the now-familiar query, "Are you there, Junior...?"

Inspired by the groovy musical hodgepodge that makes up Junior's sprawling vintage vinyl collection (he won't divulge the number of platters he owns, explaining, "It's a bit embarrassing to be like, 'I have three-thousand, four-hundred, and fifty-seven records!'"), D-D-Don't Don't Stop The Beat is dance music for people who don't like techno, soul music for people who've never watched BET a day in their lives, and rawk 'n' roll for people with an actual sense of humor. And while it's possible that this kitschen-sink diversity could be a curse in a today's pigeonhole-riddled music biz--baffling record company marketeers and fickle, ADD-afflicted record buyers alike, and therefore prematurely putting Junior Senior out to the one-hit wonder pasture--the artists formerly known as Jesper and Jeppe shrug off such concerns. "A lot of people are very narrow-minded, like if you're into rock then you can only listen to rock music," Junior sighs. "Or some say we're not really indie enough for the indie kids and not really pop enough for the pop kids. But that's just stupid! There's no reason why you can't enjoy all kinds of genres."

As for the prospect that D-D-Don't Don't Stop The Beat will alienate new fans who buy the album expecting a collection of "Move Your Feet" carbon copies, Junior says, "Yes, some people will get confused. But once they listen to the album, I think they can enjoy it. It's definitely going to be a surprise to a lot of people, but I think that's good! We like surprising people--that's a lot of what this band is all about. We don't want to do what other people do, or what we're expected to do."

Junior Senior's attitude is no doubt tremendously refreshing in these creatively stagnant times of assembly-line pop idols and hoary nu-metalheads, but even more refreshing is the complete and utter absence of angst in their merrymaking melodies. "We thought the world needed something to brighten it up a bit--some dance music that was actually different from that four-to-the-floor formula," Junior explains.

"Yeah, that whole vibe wasn't there when we started--that sort of upbeat, have-a-good-time music," concurs the perpetually jovial Senior. "It's just that mentality, the approach, like when the B-52's came out in the '70s at the same time when there were all these punk or 'alternative' bands that were so serious and angry..."

"Or like with disco, which was the dance music that punks were rebelling against," adds Junior. "We have a bit of the same attitude as disco music, in that people are smiling and dancing. We just think that you can be alternative without being angry all the time. It's just not our thing to be this tough, 'cool' rock 'n' roll band--we're not that kind of people!"

Junior Senior are being way too modest: The simple fact is, right now, they're the coolest rock 'n' roll band on the motherlovin' planet. Let's hope they d-d-don't don't stop the beat any time soon.