Julie – my anti-aircraft friend (2024)

Review:
In recent years, plenty of shoegaze songs became unlikely viral sensations: Wisp’s “Your face,” Flyingfish’s “wonder if you care,” quannnic’s “life imitates life.” Before any of them, there was julie’s 2020 single “flutter,” a frantic and fuzzed-out whirlwind, reminiscent of Swirlies, sweeping the listener into its mess of caustic guitars and hypnotic dual vocals. Since its release, it’s accumulated 36 million streams on Spotify and almost 3 million watches on YouTube. The tune is a sonic triptych — two outbursts of chaos separated by a meandering interlude. “flutter” isn’t afraid to wander; it’s confident that it can keep the listener hooked until the very end, and it succeeds. Four years later, julie are getting ready to unveil their debut full-length, my anti-aircraft friend. It’s absolutely mind-boggling that a shoegaze crew’s first album is arriving on Atlantic Records. It can make it easy to resent them; surely plenty of people feel contempt toward Wisp for signing to fellow major Interscope after one song. It begs the question of how many musicians are in this for the long haul and how many are just riding the wave of the trend. But my anti-aircraft friend is too captivating to be dismissed. Lead single “clairbourne practice,” julie explained, is “sweet, then destructive, and coming back and repeating the cycle.” This push-pull runs through the entire record, making for an engaging experience rather than passive; the band builds a big wall of sound just to tear it down seconds later. my anti-aircraft friend is not just dynamic, it’s spontaneous and reckless. Toward the end of “clairbourne practice,” the guitars thrash and halt, thrash and halt, keeping the listener on their toes. Vocalist and guitarist Keyan Pourzand, drummer Dillon Lee, and vocalist and bassist Alexandria Elizabeth began playing shows in high school in Orange County, CA, but it wasn’t very long until the pandemic hit and that wasn’t an option anymore. Shortly after, Elizabeth and Pourzand enrolled at the Southern California Institute for Architecture. Along with being a band, julie also identify as an art collective; Pourzand does sculpture work, Elizabeth paints, while Lee is a painter and illustrator. The members create mysterious visuals that only solidify the group’s alluringly eerie aesthetic. For the first couple of years, they didn’t post photos of themselves on their carefully curated Instagram grid, developing a sense of mystique that was the cherry on top. “Maybe it’s not spirituality, but it’s just living the music,” Pourzand told Teen Vogue about performing live. “It feels like you’re inside of it.” my anti-aircraft friend is a dark, thrilling place; it’s hard to listen to it without completely inhabiting it. The off-kilter, otherworldly nature of their visual art takes shape in weird song structures and colorful explosions of sound. They know exactly what note to play next to scratch an itch you didn’t even know was there. Elizabeth’s expressive soprano clashes with Pourzand’s aloof drawl. my anti-aircraft friend commences with grandeur. “catalogue,” which was first shared in September 2023, ricochets between grunge clamor and brooding quiet. It begins with Elizabeth intoning that she wants to sit and “think about the fears I thought I’d shed.” In the following songs, she and Pourzand dive into the grit, singing of malaise, envy, and vague evils, lyrics often coming across as threats: “I’ll defile, I’ll be clean/ I’ll be mean and raw,” Elizabeth announces on the titillating “feminine adornments.” The instruments creep and erupt around her, sinister and volatile. Pourzand’s vocals lead the hazy sprawl “i’ll cook my own meals,” his detached intonations ominous before getting drowned out by the wave of menacing, aggressive guitars. At the end, Elizabeth’s vocals join for a striking harmony. On the misleadingly titled “piano instrumental,” Pourzand lulls over slow riffs before Elizabeth takes over and the rhythm accelerates into a whirlwind before winding back down. Does it pick up again? You bet it does. “stuck in a car with angels” is an enrapturing, colossal finale, starting off slow and building as much tension as possible, the anticipation anxiety-inducing, like waiting for a storm to strike. When it does, Elizabeth’s haunting incantations only heighten the madness, which is tinged with wistfulness: “I want to follow you home.” my anti-aircraft friend is the result of a young band whose vision is fully fleshed and passionately executed. If there’s a group partaking in the shoegaze revival that deserves to be picked up by a major label, it’s julie, who are in this for the long haul. — stereogum

Track List:
01 - catalogue
02 - tenebrist
03 - very little effort
04 - clairbourne practice
05 - knob
06 - thread, stitch
07 - feminine adornments
08 - ill cook my own meals
09 - piano instrumental
10 - stuck in a car with angels


Media Report:
Genre: indie-rock, shoegaze
Origin: Los Angeles, California, USA
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
Compression mode: Lossless
Writing library: libFLAC 1.2.1 (UTC 2007-09-17)


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