JJ

The emergence of Swedish duo JJ in March 2009 was both meaningful and mysterious. A debut single, ‘jj no.1’, enchanted the music press, simultaneously existing across indie-­pop and hip­‐hop spectrums, excitingly new and yet frustratingly vague in its presentation. This was a taste, a scent, something intangible, an impression made without force. The music was here, but little else its makers remained anonymous. Pitchfork’s Best New Music review for the band’s de
but album, summer 2009’s ‘jj no.2’, spoke first of their enigmatic qualities, rather than precisely what this music was: another sumptuous menagerie of styles, blended by an expert hand, intoxicating and otherworldly.

Nevertheless, ‘jj no.2’ proved a critical hit, a year­‐end high-­flyer on several influential blog lists for its year of release. 2010 saw a sequel, of sorts, in the shape of ‘jj no.3’, a studio collection drawn from the same sessions, the same frame of mind, as its predecessor. Similarly well received, it put its young makers in a position where they could no longer ignore demand for a grand reveal. So both Elin Kastlander and Joakim Benon appeared in the Marcus Söderlund­‐directed video to ‘Let Go’. Cover, broken.

What JJ have captured with ‘V’, the new album, is a coherent album unlike anything they’ve previously issued. While ‘jj no.2’ and ‘jj no.3’ were conceived, originally, as a double album, which would surely have bewildered some listeners, here everything is compacted, concentrated, senses heightened. Twelve songs, spanning a breadth of compositional approaches but maintaining a pop­‐savvy accessibility and conveying emotion in very honest terms.

While JJ haven’t exactly been quiet between 2010’s ‘jj no.3’ and now, releasing a selection of collaborations and one­‐off singles –including ‘jj no.4’ (2012) and late­‐2013’s video release ‘My Boyz’ – the focus has been firmly on the making of ‘V’. As Benon explains, everything the pair has produced in the past has been part of this journey, to a zenith that they always sought to reach. But just as ‘My Boyz’ exists exclusively in and of itself, so too does the new album’s material, always envisioned as a whole, separate from other projects despite carrying over select DNA from its pop progenitors.

‘V’ doesn’t exactly do away with JJ’s affections for rap music – but there’s nothing here that’s so explicitly tied to it as on ‘jj no.2’, for instance, where ‘Ecstasy’ rode both beats and rhymes from Lil Wayne’s ‘Lollipop’. ‘jj no.3’ furthered these connections, ‘My Life’ a dream­‐world revision of (The) Game’s track of the same name. Considering this is a band that released an entire mixtape of reworked hip­‐hop cuts with 2010’s ‘Kills’ – familiar samples from Dr Dre, M.I.A. and Kanye West treated to JJ’s delicate kiss of ethereal delight – what’s heard on ‘V’ can be strikingly stripped-­back.

And why do anything to restrict the sharing of that joy? Evidently at the top of their game in 2014, JJ are ready to, in Benon’s words, “communicate with the world”, quite unlike they’ve ever done so before. They’re embracing, not retreating. Besides, mysteries are more frustrating than fascinating without resolution.