Put down your coffee, cronut, or knife. Go onto YouTube
and watch Junior Prom’s cover of Hall & Oates’ “I Can’t Go
for That.” Trust me.
It’s merely a fraction of what’s unique about the Brooklynbased duo of Mark Solomich and Erik Ratensperger, but it
introduces everything that makes the Elektra Records duo
great. There’s the sky-scraping vocal range, playful humor,
and the crisp musical interplay.
The songs on their self-titled debut (EP) bring that same
sense of joy and levitation. They’re whip-smart pop that
you can dance to. If you like Phoenix, Cut Copy, or even
New Order, odds are Junior Prom will be one of your new
favorite bands. Regardless, their sound defies verbs,
adjectives, and arbitrary genre divides. It needs to be
heard.
“It’s about striking the balance between writing a great
pop song that everyone can sing along to, but finding an
artful angle that makes it unpredictable,” says
Ratensperger.
“We want to make music that appeals to all different types
of people but don’t want to be cookie-cutter. It’s boring
to write lyrics that everyone else has written,” adds
Solomich.
After all, they recorded and scrapped an entire album
before releasing a single song. In an age where groups
attempt to discover their sound as they progress, it
highlights an unusual sonic maturity—or at least a
preternaturally locked-in musical connection.
Bonding over everyone from The Clash, to Earth Wind and
Fire, to Bruno Mars, Ratensperger and Solomich navigate the
terrain between indie rock, punk, and dance-pop.
“I usually tell people it’s like punk soul dub dance
music,” Solomich says. “At least, that’s how we hear it.”
The goal is something fresh but always fun. Where you
expect them to go right, they dart left. The arrangements
always twist at a slightly different angle. But everyone is
invited to the party. Pop music isn’t necessarily Britney
Spears or Katy Perry. Pop is universal. Junior Prom is
pop, but they’re also much more.
The pair don’t take themselves all that seriously—only the
music. Their bonafides are legitimate, shored up over
innumerable short-lived punk bands and indie rock outfits
during their teen years and early 20s. Randomly enough,
Solomich caught a show from Ratensperger’s first band when
they played a Pittsburgh basement show.
But when Junior Prom came together, part of their mission
was to break away from the screw-face pretensions that dog
many contemporary scenes. It’s body music first, but
there’s a restless intelligence that pierces through when
you stop moving. The lyrics riff on everything from
economic inequality to comic tales of violent exgirlfriends. Junior Prom is the sort of band that makes
your realize it’s always summer in some hemisphere.
“It’s really about making music that hopefully encourages
people to engage, whether they throw down on the dance
floor, or roll down their windows, blast our music and sing
along,” Ratensperger says. “No matter what song you put on,
we want people to feel something.”
http://juniorprom.bandcamp.com/
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https://www.facebook.com/juniorprom
https://twitter.com/juniorpromz
http://www.youtube.com/juniorpromTV
http://instagram.com/promgramz
http://press.atlanticrecords.com/junior-prom/
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1290 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10104
Tel: 212.707.2000 Fax: 212.405.5477
3400 W. Olive Ave. Burbank, CA 91505
Tel: 818.238 6800 Fax: 818.562.9211
http://press.atlanticrecords.com/