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Boy Genius

Anchorage

(Greenpop; US: 20 May 2008; UK: Available as import)

There’s something wounded in the sound of Boy Genius, a Brooklyn band with a knack for mid-‘80s jangle-pop heroics. Perhaps it’s that skittish harmonica, or the bounding tempos, racing forward like a calf discovering the power of its own stride; maybe it’s the way Jason Korenkiewicz (a former PopMatters staffer) sings, dangling his words on short strings before cutting them loose. Bittersweet and romantically infectious, Anchorage, the band’s full-length debut, is stocked with blissed-out sing-alongs (“Radio Silence”, “Eureka”, “Failing Gravity”—dig the wink to “Bold as Love” in that one) and colored, on the edges, by trumpet, glockenspiel, and tried-and-true male/female harmonies. “I am harboring a hope / That this harbor is my home,” Korenkiewicz sings in the title track, while the band springs eternal around him—a salve for even the most broken of things.

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Zeth Lundy has been writing for PopMatters since 2004. He is the author of Songs in the Key of Life (Continuum, 2007), and has contributed to the Boston Phoenix, Metro Boston, and The Oxford American. He lives in Boston.


Tagged as: anchorage | boy genius
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