It seems to be a commonly held opinion that for music to be good, it has to be complex and sophisticated. Often, this holds true, bands like Sigur Rós certainly couldn't achieve their sound with only simple ideas, and need complicated arrangements to get their ideas across. However, it's not something that's true all of the time. For instance, The Sex Pistols were pretty simple, musically speaking, yet they were successful both commercially and artistically. Junior Boys echo the simplicity of the 70s punk bands, not in their actual attitude and sound, but in the way that they've reduced the seemingly irreducible complexity of what came before to a sound that is very simple, very sparse, and very good.

At its heart, "Lastexit" is an electronic album, but it's very much unlike any electronic album that has found wide success lately. It doesn't dabble with the discopunk of !!! or The Rapture, it stays away from the cheesy retro stylings of Scissor Sisters, and it's not as heavy and dense as something from The Chemical Brothers or Orbital.

So just what is it? It's light as a feather, full of empty space, yet still stylish, confident, and hypnotic. It's synthpop without the exaggerated posturing, garish sounds, or artificial textures. It achieves something that few electronic albums manage to do, in that it sounds natural, rather than something that's been constructed.

From More Than Real, which opens up with tinny percussion and blossoms into a sparse yet beautiful track, to When I'm Not Around, which closes the album, each song is a slow, hypnotic ball of sound. In between, we encounter songs like Under The Sun, which features a repeating, mesmerising riff that leads to a catchy vocal refrain, and songs like the stammering High Come Down, and the glacial beauty of tracks like Teach Me How To Fight.

If this album has a weakness, it's that in a few places, it can become a little bit too sparse, and fade into background music. The instrumental Neon Rider is an example of this. While it's pleasant enough, it does sound like something that would be played in the background at a supermarket. It's not a huge problem, but the album is so riveting for much of its length, and it's disappointing that there are a few patches where it loses this quality and becomes too abstract.

Abstraction aside though, this is still a fascinating album, and easily one of the best electronic releases of 2004 so far. It has gentle melodies, harder beats, and a boatload of smart pop hooks. Hopefully this album will set off a wave of new innovation in the genre, because this definitely sounds like the synthpop of the future.