JJ
JJ—Elin Kastlander and Joakim Benon—made bright synth pop at exactly the right moment in the late 2000s. Album jj nº 3
with songs like Into the Light.
Signed to Sincerely Yours and Secretly Canadian, toured with The xx. All the positioning correct: ABBA lineage, comparisons to La Roux, the whole apparatus of electronic pop working as designed.
Listening felt clean and distant at once. Well-executed, nothing out of place, and somehow unremarkable. There’s that gap between competent and compelling—JJ lived in it. Not because anything was wrong, but because everything was so settled. They’d found the formula and did it right, and maybe that was enough. But it was also maybe all there was to it.