Juliet

http://juliet.bandcamp.com

Ah, finally the time has come to get my writersuit on, have a cup of coffee (yes, drinking extremely hot coffee in the midst of this sickening hot weather is great for inciting delirium) and sit back to take a listen to some new music with my cat. She is actually sitting next to the speakers at the moment and since we have similar taste in tunes I guess that it is enough to signal a writeup full of praise.

"Juliet" is a four piece noisy emo band coming from Arizona. I've been contacted by Keegan from the band about posting their "Christmas Island" EP back in February and due to my sloth-like speed of posting they also managed to pull out a split with "Blackwater" in the meantime. I'll be talking about the EP first and then later reflect a bit on the split, since at first listen it seemed that there was a slight change of sound going on.
In any case, "Christmas Islands" came out in February, featuring four amazing songs with around fourteen minutes of tunes. I have to be honest that at first I thought that I will have a hard time writing about this due to my somewhat strange music mood in which I find myself recently. My previous month was grasped with melodic or acoustic tunes and in a moment I thought that I kinda lost touch when it comes to chaotic or noise music. Lucky for me, "Juliet" managed to sweep me of my feet and cast me back into the neglected turbulent sea. The opener of the EP is a song called "Atlanta" and believe me when I say that it was instant love. As previously stated, they whip out some pretty sweet noisy emo tunes toward the listener, completely charged with passion and a certain mood which is dragged along with the music. What was personally very peculiar for me when it comes to this song is the thing that initially attracted me toward it and it is the lyrics. Usually, I first take a focus on the instruments or more likely the band as a whole, but this is probably the first time when I had a feeling like I am just listening to the words and nothing else. Maybe because I am in a touchy-feely sort of mood and the lyrics really remind me of a "certain someone", but in any case I consider this as a very important and big merit of the band, since they definitely succeeded in invoking something new in me. The vocal itself is great, walking the fine line between singing and plain talking, though it has an excellent tone like the voice is about to crack and the singer will just drop to the floor and start crying which is nothing short of perfect if you ask me.
Once I turned my attention to the instruments I realized how amazing they are and how great they are entwined with the vocal. The sound which they create has a stunning flow to it and no matter how much they change melodies in the course of a song or how much chaos they create it all seems so nicely packed into a great whole. "Aly Goola" is a perfect example of this. It has a fast paced rhythm at the beginning, a beautiful melody reminding me of some 90's emo tunes, but then everything takes a slower turn, becoming mellow and gentle, going so far to the point where we hear whistling from the band members. So basically, from fast to slow pace, but still it drives you so nicely that it just washes over you in a single wave. It is quite hard to explain, but I definitely have a great feeling while listening to their tunes, sort of like listening to one big song other than four.
The split with "Blackwater" came out in May and it brought two more songs from "Juliet" to see the light of day. I wanted to leave some space to talk about this split, because I think that there are some new layers to their sound present here. In contrast to the EP, it seems that the band went a tiny bit further into the noise area, since their sound became somewhat more crunchy while still keeping all their traits from the previous release. The guitar playing was also pushed to the front and now it is not completely melded down with the rest of the band. Now it is not just contributing to the background noise, but much rather it takes a great role in supplying some interesting melodic parts like in the song "Dead Teens". As you can see, these are just slight changes, but it is definitely cool to hear a band slowly evolve in this fashion...or maybe I just get into my music a bit too much.
It took me some time to think of possible references and influences the band might be associated with, but nothing seems to cut it. They remind me of a lot of other projects, but they still have an extremely strong sense of uniqueness, so you always ultimately fail when trying to tag them. The closes thing I came up with was "Die, Empreor, Die" and "Boats Against the Current"  mixed with "Japandroids" for a noisy garage edge. Sounds weird, huh? It probably does, but trust me when I say that this is definitely something you shouldn't miss.

I always get scared when I discover a band and then think that they may have broken up in the meantime, but luckily "Juliet" is still alive and kicking. They have a gig lined up for 9th July along with "Joyce Manor", "Rumspringer" and "Come On Die Young", so if any of you lucky boys and girls can go to their show, just rush over there and dance like crazy, no second thoughts allowed.
Oh and by the way, my cat is still hanging out here and she definitely gives a seal of approval on this fine quartet.