Julie's Haircut - After the Dark

Digging through the niches that Italy's "official" record industry leaves unattended, you'll discover that, for some years now, something has been stirring in the country's musical undergrowth. Among gnarled, twisted olive trees and withered, rotting oaks, fragile fronds and shrubs have sprung up and, over time, have grown sturdier and put down roots. To drop the metaphor, Italy can now count on a sizeable and credible array of bands who, absorbing and reworking the lessons of the most significant Anglo-American indie acts, have brought a breath of fresh air - albeit of limited reach - to our musical landscape.

Let's be clear (and this is the writer's opinion): this isn't anything sensational, not a revolution for our ears - the inspirations and reference points of each band are quite obvious, at times even too blatant. But compared to what we're used to, it's already a step forward.

In this context, three names in particular have caught the attention of industry insiders: Giardini di Mirò, Yuppie Flu and, in this specific case, Julie's Haircut.

Julie's Haircut were formed in Sassuolo in the spring of 1994. The first lineup was a trio: Nicola Caleffi on guitar and vocals; Luca Giovanardi on drums and vocals; Laura Storchi on bass and vocals. In the early months, the collective recorded a series of demos and, from their very first year, started playing in pubs and venues around the city and the region. Nothing of particular note happened until the end of the '90s, aside from a double changeover on drums: in 1995, Giancarlo Frigieri joined the band, with Giovanardi switching to guitar; then, less than two years later, Roberto Morselli took over from Frigieri himself. The real break came in 1998, when the group signed with GammaPop Records, the label behind their debut full-length.

Fever In The Funk House came out the following year and proved a decent debut, though it didn't achieve much commercial success. The album, sung entirely in English (as were all the ones that followed), immediately lays bare the band's reference points and intentions, offering direct, carefree songs rooted in the sound of American college bands and the most straightforward garage rock. Cases in point are the opener "Black T-Shirt" or the single "Everybody Needs Someone To Fuck", which brings to mind Dinosaur Jr. at their cleanest. There's no shortage of forays into hard blues either ("Nuclear Core Blues" or the excellent "Safe As"), while "Too Much Love" clearly echoes the Led Zeppelin of "Rock'n Roll" and "Black Dog".

The most interesting moments are perhaps those where the band strays from its main influences and shows a degree of originality, as in the hypnotic "Chip & Fish Brain" or the restless ballad "My House Is On Fire".

Overall, the verdict is certainly positive, even though the debt to their mentors is still heavy. Still, one can already spot a trait that would become a constant in the band's evolution: the sound, even on the more aggressive tracks, is extremely clean and polished, which makes the record a very enjoyable listen.

The new millennium, besides a string of EPs and higher-profile shows, saw keyboardist and multi-instrumentalist Fabio Vecchi join the lineup.

The second album, Stars Never Looked So Bright, came out in 2001, again on Gamma Pop.

To quote the film, something had changed. Alongside tracks that could easily have come from the recent past, like "Stop What You're Doing Now" or the ballads "Pass The Ashtray" and "Everything Is Alright", new elements emerge that betray certain influences and hint at a degree of evolution. On one hand, the debt to Sonic Youth grows deeper (as in "Sumopower" and all the tracks sung by Storchi); on the other, aside from isolated and short-lived noise experiments (the not entirely successful "Geza X"), one senses forays into distinctly psychedelic territory (essentially in the Harrison-esque "Love Session #1"), hinting at the band's possible (and intriguing) future direction. For now it remains a largely unique, isolated episode, but, as we'll see, it's also a prelude to what's to come.

Stars Never Looked So Bright overall sits a notch below its predecessor, being less incisive and spontaneous, while at the same time suspended between a concrete past and a future still to be defined. It therefore lacks the cohesion of Fever In The Funk House, but the band certainly comes out of it with fresh inspiration.

The album achieved greater success than their debut: proof of this is the fact that the band stepped up their live shows and were invited to play at some fairly notable festivals. Julie's Haircut played on MTV as part of the Supersonic programme, performed at the Tora! Tora! Festival alongside Afterhours, Shandon, Verdena and others (in later years too), and took part in the MTV Brand: New Tour.

2003 was a busy year for the group: Julie's were involved in a tribute to Pavement and, more importantly, signed with a new label, Homesleep Records (a name that has made headlines in recent years, signing a number of promising acts from the Italian underground), which allowed the band to reach a far wider audience, both within and beyond the Italian music scene.

This newfound access to resources and means paid off that same year. At the end of 2003, Julie's Haircut released their third album, Adult Situations.

The new elements that had appeared sketched out and not yet fully formed on Stars Never Looked So Bright leave here a tangible, clearly defined mark. The record thus stands as the most balanced and mature the band had made up to that point: greater attention is paid to the sound, the songwriting and arrangements are more refined, and the lineup feels tighter.

Things kick off with "In The Air Tonight", which, from an intro-verse recalling the atmospheres of their labelmates Giardini di Mirò, morphs into a pop-rock track with occasional bursts of distorted guitar, closer to their usual formula. Next comes "Academy Awards", one of the record's most carefree and infectious tracks, driven in the chorus by a bell-and-guitar riff that hits the mark perfectly.

Up to this point, the album stays true to the formula the band had established on their previous two records, but things perk up with "We Are Not Alone". It's simply a transitional instrumental piece, but one that would prove distinctly prophetic of what was to come. After the rather bland single "The Power Of Psychic Revenge", we arrive at one of the record's finest moments. "The Last Living Boy In Zombietown" opens with one of the band's now-typical riffs, but softens in the verse into a melancholy, piano-led melody, before exploding triumphantly back into the chorus that reprises the opening theme. It's a track whose lighter elements recall a certain atmospheric post-rock, while avoiding tedium thanks to a careful dose of psychedelic touches.

After the interlude of "Skokology", here comes "Marmalade", where soft sounds peek through, recalling the Beck of "Where's At?", and "Fear Don't Live Here Anymore", in which, over a tribal groove, wah-wah guitars and synthesized strings and keyboards pile up in an atmosphere that strongly recalls the Motorpsycho of "Let Them Eat Cake". On "The Big Addiction", Julie's Haircut on one hand quote themselves, echoing in places "My House Is On Fire" from their debut; on the other, with the coda that closes the track, they bring to mind an unthinkable "Sir Psycho Sexy" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

After the interlude of "Sleeping On the Couch", built around a sampled rap beat, comes the fitting conclusion: "Private Hell" is in fact one of the best and most evocative tracks on the album. Starting from an incipit like some cursed nocturnal ballad, the song expands until it turns into an epic melody: it's the bridge linking the Julie's Haircut of the past with the one still to come. Listening to their latest album, it's impossible not to think back to this song.

Their last album came out in 2006, again on Homesleep Records. In the years separating Adult Situations from their previous effort, the band broadens its scope by taking part in various festivals and compilations, which raise their profile. There's also a new entry: Andrea Scarfone joins the band in 2005, contributing guitar and bass.

After Dark, My Sweet is perhaps the most discussed and controversial album in the Emilian collective's career. Some branded it pretentious and arrogant, slamming it (almost) unreservedly; others praised it uncritically, beyond its actual merits. As far as this writer is concerned, it's a brave choice and a clear break from what had come before. Of course, as has been noted, the hints and early signs of this change of direction are scattered unevenly through the other albums, especially the third.

If that weren't enough to prove the band's firm resolve to strike out on new paths, a few details about the album's making do the job: only four of the eleven tracks that make it up are sung, several pieces comfortably exceed five minutes, at least five tracks are "take 1s", meaning songs played live in a single take and recorded exactly as they came out; and then there's the participation of former Spacemen 3 member Sonic Boom.

As if that weren't enough, just listening to the second track would leave little room for doubt. "Sister Pneumonia" is one of the tracks most indicative of the new direction this album seems to be charting, as well as one of its finest moments. It essentially consists of a continuous alternation of crescendos, falls, and variations on the same theme, which repeats identically from start to finish. It's worth noting that most of the tracks are marked by a deliberate (and, in some ways, inevitable, given how the album was conceived and made) simplicity of composition, offset however by greater attention to arrangements and sounds, never so clean and crisp before.

The mood that runs through the whole album is very sixties, but tempered by decidedly modern sonics, which give it greater immediacy and impact. Then comes "Death Machine", another live-take track with a spot-on synth riff, followed by the mirror-image "Liv Ulmann" and "Ingrid Thulin", born from the same session but then reworked and reshaped to the point of heading in different directions: the first brushes up against kraut-rock, the second carries echoes of Pink Floyd.

The ghosts of the past return in the Youth-like "Purple Jewel" and in the lovely "Afterdark", though always filtered through a psychedelic lens. A lens that fogs up a little on the overlong "Gemini Pt. 1 & Pt. 2" and "My Eyes Have Seen The Glory", which nonetheless don't disgrace themselves.

Although the second half dips a little, the album is certainly the most consistent and uniform of the band's career, and even in its slacker moments it never loses the overall atmosphere running through it. A successful experiment, in short, even if the record can easily be attacked for its "anachronism".

Of course, the picture would change if the band stopped at this stage and ceased to progress, in which case the formula would very likely become tedious, if not unbearable. Either way, credit must go to the band for managing, over the span of just four albums, to repeatedly and gradually reinvent themselves. So there's every reason to hope for further evolution on their next, forthcoming album.

In 2009 the band released Our Secret Ceremony, an ambitious double album, decent overall, but suffering from the usual flaws of double albums, namely lack of concision, an excess of ideas, a tendency to repeat certain elements, and so on.

The first disc – titled "Sermons" – consists of songs that follow the band's usual Spacemen 3/Sonic Youth blueprint, and so far so good, since Julie's Haircut's compositional skills are beyond question. Worth noting are the dizzying, krautdelic "Mountain Tea Traders", "The Shadow, Our Home" and "The Devil In Kate Moss", while "Origins" draws straight from Silver Apples with no middleman.

On the second disc ("Liturgy"), things don't work quite as well. Here the tracks, whether short or long, are structured like kraut-rock suites, enriched with shifting shades as they unfold, but whose steady rhythm tends to wear thin over time.

In short, a trim here and there wouldn't have hurt, but there it is. There's still plenty of tasty meat on the bone, though.

The band's tendency to spread out their output with EPs, singles and splits continues with The Wildlife Variations, in which krautrock motorik and English lysergic sound – not forgetting early post-punk, also from across the Channel – find an elegant synthesis. The EP comprises four excellent tracks, as compelling in their composition as in the care taken with their sound.

"Dark Leopards Of The Moon" has a gait that owes as much to Neu! as to Joy Division, especially in the vocal lines, close to the atmospheres of "Closer", while the second track "Johannes" likes to light up the dark with scented candles evoking Spacemen 3 when they toyed with acoustic textures as well as effects-laden guitars.

The spell remains strong on the tense, hypnotic "Bonfire", as dark and mysterious as a track by the never-forgotten Colder could be. The sound and hushed vocals keep you glued to the listen thanks to an arrangement that's taut and always on a knife's edge.

The closer, "The Marriage Of The Sun And The Moon", is percussive and cyclical, a musical celebration that preaches the gospel of Can.

The Wildlife Variations is very much a kind of ritual, in which man finds his original nature, perhaps by using all those technological tools - and in this case musical ones too - that contemporary life offers. Julie's Haircut have thus become modern-day "noble savages".

With their sixth album, Ashram Equinox, the band from Emilia break through new barriers, giving up sung lyrics altogether and offering a genuine naive tribute to Teutonic rock: "Ashram", "Taotie" and "Taarma" are tracks that run through continuous patterns and galleries of electronic effects, in a kind of lounge-style rereading of cosmic couriers and jazz-rock.

Their fascination with the spacier side of Miles Davis takes shape in a cover of his "Shhh/Peaceful" (2016).

The same lysergic vein responsible for their recent, ambitious output is still at the heart of the new chapter Invocation And Ritual Dance Of My Demon Twin (2017). New gems include the 11 minutes of "Zukunft", a wordless jam of space blues building through murmurs, cacophonous shrieks and sax, and certainly the Hawkwind-esque launch pad of "Deluge". The vocals resurface amid the esoteric mood of "The Fire Sermon". The rest ranges from fine experiments to crowd-pleasing moves, but it's nonetheless the album that fittingly crowns the 20th anniversary of the Modena outfit - uncompromising, irrational, forever hungry for tension.

In autumn 2019 came In The Silence Electric, again released by London's Rocket Recordings. Having abandoned the suites of their recent past, the song form is now shaped through lysergic trips that can take on the guise of motorik forays into uncharted spaces ("Sorcerer" and the remarkable "Until The Lights Go Out") or, conversely, move with barely any defined structure, as if suspended in a dreamlike, almost cinematic limbo ("Anticipation Of The Night").

It's precisely the sharp contrast between moments of involution - inward-looking above all - and spiritual elevation that drives the album's invisible script, well symbolized by 1970s photographs of Annegret Soltau bound in threads from which she's called upon to free herself. Thus the long shadows of "Emerald Kiss" become almost oppressive in the jazzy sax echoes, while the apparent calm of "Darlings Of The Sun" and "Pharaon's Dream" reverberates into messianic echoes that simply fade out or, conversely, dissolve into instrumental chaos. Quite singular, one might say, are the solutions adopted for "Lord Help Me Find The Way", a blues for interstellar crossings, and for an "In Return" immersed in a disorienting ambient setting.

Six years on, Julie's Haircut return under the banner of breaking with continuity. The common thread linking the Emilian band's albums is a dark-hued psychedelia that Luca Giovanardi and co. have explored from every angle. Radiance Opposition (2025) is perhaps the latest piece of the puzzle, eight songs in which the darkness is torn open by a brand-new soul spirit. On board, in fact, is Italian-Nigerian singer Anna Bassy, and it's somewhat surprising to note how the material has taken shape around her presence, partly softening the most radical (and deeply rooted) inflections of the Sassuolo combo, without giving up the project's distinctive identity.

Within the folds of the new material creep trip-hop rhythms ("To The Sacred Mantle"), psych-rock mantras imbued with a brand-new spirituality ("Unit Circle"), right up to the electric sabbath of "Extinction Of The Sun" which, alongside the dark uptempo "The Earth Knows" (not without echoes of Black Angels), represents the most inspired moment on "Radiance Opposition". A work that testifies to a change within continuity, a bold and certainly intriguing lateral move, even if the feeling remains that there's still a huge amount of potential yet to be unleashed.

Contributions by Davide Bassi and Antonio Ciarletta ("Our Secret Ceremony"), Gianluca Polverari ("The Wildlife Variations"), Michele Saran ("Ashram Equinox", "Invocation And Ritual Dance"), Fabio Guastalla ("In The Silence Electric", "Radiance Opposition")

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