REVIEW: Julie Cool - Demo

Laura Kerry

Our experience of music owes much to the environment in which we hear it. Sometimes, that environment is internal, such as the post-breakup void that makes a song sound raw or the new love that renders it airy and upbeat. Often, it’s external, arising from the landscape outside of a car window or the rain hitting your bedroom windows.

Julie Cool’s debut EP exhibits the opposite effect: the music transforms the landscape around it. In the dead of winter, Demo infuses its surroundings with a shimmery warmth. Just four songs long, it’s a pop of summer in January—a sunny contrast to the cold that had settled in Baltimore, where the band (Elliott Dean, Chris Arreza, Ben Bjork, and Matt Morin) lives, when they released the album on one of the last days of 2017.

The main sources of the Demo’s warmth are lo-fi production, bright guitar, and relaxed vocals. Combined, they form easygoing psych-pop tunes whose jangliness and nonchalance resembles—uncannily in the case of “Triceratops”—that of Mac DeMarco. For the most part, though, Julie Cool is dreamier than DeMarco. In the opener, “Heaven Knows (feat. ruru),” the pretty male and female harmonies sit further back in the mix than the instrumental voices, resulting in haziness. Though the spacious and clear guitar parts offer a bright foundation, the vocals inject undertones of wistfulness, emphasized by lyrics such as, “When you leave me all alone / All the thoughts collide in my head.” As the song increasingly builds to a dreamy cacophony, the listener can imagine those thoughts colliding.

Julie Cool’s dreaminess emerges in different forms elsewhere in the album. In “Sheila,” a drum loop fit for Michael Jackson sets the stage for a woozy song whose lyrics project a John Hughes film in the movie screen of the mind (“Do you see her / Moving down the hall / She won’t see you / She don’t care at all”). The track sounds like a warped ‘80s pop song steeped in jangly guitars.

Good old-fashioned pop also dwells at the core of “Triceratops” and “I Don’t Mind,” both of which use foot-tapping melodies, time-tested chord progressions, and head-bobbing rhythms, even as they—and you along with them—wobble and float through hazy and sometimes surreal compositions. While winter is stark and severe, Julie Cool’s debut is lush, loose, and vibrant, full of the kind of music that not only immerses the listener, but everything around her, too.

VIDEO PREMIERE: Room Thirteen - Roccopulco

Roccopulco from Room Thirteen on Vimeo.

Laura Kerry

The debut album of the band Room Thirteen came out this past winter, but its spirit season has arrived just in time for the New Orleans-based group to release the video for the title track, “Roccopulco.” A mix of dreamy vocals, bossa nova guitar, and jazzy horns, the song sounds like a vision of the ‘60s imagined while drifting off to sleep on a bright-colored towel at the beach.

The video combines this retro tone with more contemporary touches. Set on a dark stage, it features a blazer- and moustache-sporting saxophonist playing an impassioned solo and backup dancers moving slowly in unison as the song cycles through shimmering harmonies. But the dancers contain elements of both go-go and American Apparel, one of the many ways in which the old-timey and tropical touches don’t take themselves too seriously. Fish dissolve into psychedelic patterns; the sax solo breaks into a cheesy split-screen; and a collection of fruits, leafy plants, and a mysterious glittery “D” appear on stage in the beginning and end before confetti rains down, a delightfully odd way to illustrate their equatorial party vibe. Theatrical, sultry, silly, and as mesmerizing as the song, the video for “Roccopulco” is the perfect way to reimagine Room Thirteen’s summery music.

REVIEW: The Walters - Young Men

Raquel Dalarossa

In early December, amid names like Adele, Justin Bieber, and Coldplay, The Walters found themselves yo-yoing comfortably up and down Spotify’s “Global Viral 50” chart. Their song “I Love You So,” the opener to the relatively nascent band’s first EP, was clearly making the rounds not just within the Chicagoans’ local circuit, but worldwide. The group’s social media pages corroborate this small-scale phenomenon: their Facebook brims with fan shout-outs spanning across the US and from France to New Zealand.

And yet, the self-described “cardigan rock” five-piece, formed just a little over a year ago, haven’t even been signed to a label yet, which seems like an inexcusable oversight in this day and age. There’s unquestionably something special about these guys, and with the recent release of their second EP, Young Men, this is a ripe time to dig into what the hype is all about.

Right off the bat, The Walters exude an element of kitsch with a sly wink, from the band’s name to the latest EP’s cover art (featuring a retro typeface and each of the members sporting crisp, white turtlenecks). Ostensibly, much of their actual music is also angled at nostalgia—sweet melodies recall ‘60s pop rock, infused with a penchant for vocal harmonies and a surfiness that have led to more than one Beach Boys comparison.

Indie bands with this type of sound really seem to have multiplied beyond their usual numbers in recent months, but The Walters stand out for their smart song and lyric writing. The seven-track EP’s third song, “Sweet Leaf,” is a solid example of the band’s style and strengths: it’s a short but immensely catchy tune, with a sunny guitar riff that belies its honest words about unrequited love. 

Even more vintage leaning is the doo-woppy “I Haven’t Been True,” which turns the traditionally saccharine genre sideways with lyrics like “I wanted you but I just couldn’t stay” and “It’s hard to love someone / When you know that we are far too young.” Their lyrical content achieves a quality that is often elusive: effortless sincerity, which makes them not just easy to listen to, but easy to relate to.

Young Men closes with two particularly sweet ballads, “Cottage Roads” and “Autumn Leaves.” These could easily have turned out to be a couple of throwaways, but they’re tightly crafted with interesting, warm melodies and softly overlapping vocals. It’s thoughtful, yet buoyed by undeniable catchiness. Though these guys may not take themselves too seriously, their music easily convinces us to do so—coupled with their proven viral capabilities (strong resume material for any millennial), there's no doubt a well-deserved big break is headed their way.