Junior Boys + Max Tundra - Middle East Downstairs (Cambridge, MA; May 8, 2009)

Ben Jacobs (Max Tundra) dances the way a toddler dances: jubilantly, effusively, and without a hint of self-consciousness. His arms stab the air as if in a fit, occasionally with the beat but just as frequently not. Jacobs spends his set imitating a whirlwind. He flits from synthesizer to keyboard to melodica and occasionally takes hyper excursions into the crowd. It is impossible to watch Max Tundra and not think three things: 1) this man is crazy; 2) this man is crazy; and 3) damn, this is fun.

Like a lot of electronic music, it is difficult to listen to Max Tundra’s records and envision them being transferred to the stage. His albums are schizophrenic, alternating between polyrhythmic and anti-rhythmic abruptly and without notice. And to be fair, that confusion doesn’t immediately evaporate on stage; a steady beat is often hard to find, and cyclical songs are suddenly cut off with a curt “Thank you very much.” Yet on Friday night at the Middle East, the stage seemed very much like the songs’ natural habitat. Small riffs were highlighted, bass was turned up and songs bloomed. With Jacobs providing visual cues on stage, it was impossible not to catch the Max Tundra bug. It’s no coincidence that Jacobs announced a song as “the vaccine for swine flu”—his tunes are scary contagious.

Set opener “Orphaned” chewed through my brain with electronic teeth. “Which Song,” a seemingly endless jam, mysteriously evoked stadium rock. “Will Get Fooled Again” made Friendster references seem cool again. And when Jacobs closed the set with a goofy cover of “So Long, Farewell” from The Sound Of Music, an audience of waving fans were reluctant to bid him adieu.

Following Max Tundra on stage, Junior Boys presented a stark contrast. Lead singer Jeremy Greenspan stands on the reserved side of the frontman spectrum, while soundboard artist Matt Didemus stands in front of his synthesizers looking positively bored. In fact, the visuals of their performance are so unimportant that for a few minutes of their encore the stage lights switched off, leaving only a lit sign toward the back of the stage announcing “Junior Boys.” In those few moments, in the dark basement of the Middle East, it all made sense. For Junior Boys, it’s all about the music. No crazy antics, no prancing around stage, no sing-alongs. Their show is rarely interactive, to the extent that Greenspan and Didemus often appear as afterthoughts. But I suspect they like it that way: music and music alone.

From the start of Junior Boys’ set, the crowd was electric, hyped up from Tundra and ready to groove. Junior Boys hastened to accommodate, and for a band usually melodic and reserved, they wasted no time in blowing up the joint. The drums cracked, the synths were thick and the pit was sweaty. Greenspan and Didemus, with the help of a drummer, worked the crowd up with an explosive run of tunes.

When the tempo slowed down during the familiar mid-set lull, Junior Boys were more exposed. “Parallel Lines” eased the crowd down from its buzz, introducing a string of slower tunes that threatened to stunt the night’s energy. Greenspan’s detached voice faintly lost a battle against heavy loops for a few songs. But it gave audience members a chance to catch their breath and helped the boys hit even harder when they returned to quicker jams.

Before closing the set, Greenspan took a moment to address the crowd. “I didn’t say anything earlier because I didn’t want to jinx it,” he admitted, “but we spent most of this night terrified.” On Thursday night, equipment failure had derailed a New York show, with two broken samplers forcing them to scrap their set. Greenspan called it one of the worst nights of his life. Being up on stage playing for a vibrant crowd, he shared in relieved tones, “was like therapy.”

If it was therapy, it was group therapy. A crowd bathed in stage lights danced the night away, bumping in time with the throbbing tones of aural healing. Following Greenspan’s admission, Junior Boys launched themselves with reckless (if restrained) abandon into a run of songs that culminated with the familiar “In The Morning,” a track that lit up the room.

It’s rare that an encore is the highlight of a set, but Friday night was about defying expectations. As Junior Boys returned to the stage to play the life out of “Under the Sun,” the lights went down at the Middle East, and hundreds of concert-goers were hit with a blank screen and a wall of sound. It was like a personal therapy session, and it was all about the music.

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