There is nearly nothing bad and so much good about Royksopp’s Junior that it feels like it should be a better album.

This is the sound of tremendous potential settling for an overall impression of nifty.  There are a few reactionary ways to digest this snack of a full length.  Expect nothing but a dance-pop trifle, and it may surprise with frequent passages of unexpected flavor and substantial substinence.  Expect a multi-course feast of dense, complimentary dishes, and be dissapointed at how much of it ends up as light and ephemeral as a bubble.

Everything is quite good and bubbly…the album is like champagne, but it is debatable whether this is the good stuff or that pleasantly sweet 5-dollar obligatory New Year’s purchase.

There’s nothing wrong with candy pop, mind you.  At it’s best, it has a transcendence and permanence that all the coagulated guitars in Nebraska can’t touch. Royksopp’s second album, The Understanding, was a complete surprise after the Air-lite downtempo gem that debut Melody AM was in just how much it embraced vocal melody sugar and got away with it.

Junior attempts to balance the two approaches, though it keeps tripping toward the pop side (the counterpart album, Senior, is due later this year with a promise to be darker, more instrumental and introspective).  It works well song by song without ever quite managing to cohere into something like a great album.  In trying to harness their two main tendencies, embellished lounge-ready brooders and sparkly dancefloor-ready spinners, they lose the commitment to either extreme that made their previous albums take off.

Opener “Happy Up Here,” a shamelessly exuberant, Parliament-sampling parade of giddiness; and closer “It’s What I Want,” an anthem that sounds like it was beamed from an alternate, groovier ’70s AM radio and given a modern wax job, are highlights that suggest a fairly amazing record betwixt them.  The instrumental mood-breakers “Royksopp Forever” and “Silver Cruiser” fare best in their recollection of Melody AM’s bittersweet, embellished slow head-nodders, perhaps because they are surrounded by more tepid pop numbers.

And the pop songs that dominate are fine, particularly in their use of the best damn hipster divas Sweden and Norway have to offer.  Karen Dreijer of the Knife (and her own solo project Fever Ray) sings one of Royksopp’s best songs ever here, “This Must Be It.” Unfortunately, her second appearance, on “Tricky Tricky” sounds like a not bad but considerably diminished homogenization of the Knife.

This is indicative of the mild roller coaster the album offers.  Royksopp keep touching greatness and then descending back into mere decency.  The attempt at a diverse, accessible record is commendable, but seems to have come at the cost of excellence.  Neither Royksopp nor their glorious guest cast is ever at their best, while sadistically hinting that they could be.  They sound almost afraid to rule.