Pitchfork

By the time you read this, Sally Shapiro will have already played her first North American show, part of a too-brief DJ tour with producer Johan Agebjörn. I know! Whether it turned out she was as shy as her album persona or as affable as she was in her Pitchfork interview with Matthew Solarski doesn't really matter much. Sure, it's part of her style, borrowed from Italo disco and fragile synth-pop, and it dovetails nicely with the public's unusually gradual (in this Wikipedia age) discovery of her, but what shot Disco Romance up to our #32 album of 2007 was the way this elusive mystique was integrated into her music. Shapiro's rendition of Roger Gunnarsson-penned "Jackie Jackie (Spend This Winter With Me)" appears on Disco Romance's North American release, and now it's gotten into the hands of Junior Boys for the new Remix Romance Vol. 1 and it's streaming at RCRD LBL. The Canadian electro-pop duo have their own romantic streak, but their slinky remix loops Shapiro's wordless sighs over a funky bass line for a lonely late-night atmosphere like that created by some of the After Dark acts, with less post-punk detachment. When Shapiro intones, "It's just that things very easily get complicated around me," now it sounds like she could be referring to something a little more sinister. Watch out, New York.

Stream:> Sally Shapiro: "Jackie Junior (Junior Boys Remix)"
[from Remix Romance Vol. 1; due 04/15/08 on Paper Bag Records]