Jucifer
I Name You Destroyer
Velocette
Wow, this is turning out to be a great time for romantically-involved genre-bending duos! The White Stripes (okay, they might be related), San Francisco’s Pepito, and now Jucifer, a coupla crazy kids from Athens, GA. I’ve never seen them live, but apparently they’re just absolutely monster: Edgar Livengood ruining his drum kit, and Amber Valentine crooning and shrieking and beating the hell out of her guitar. Legendary, in the right circles.
This album lets you know what they’re all about: everything. A whole lot of kinds of music are represented here, from death metal pop to shoegazer funk, and it all sounds original and cool and soulful and bored and sexy. We get the second great song with the title “Amplifier” (the first was The dB’s version), which turns a little ticky-tacky amp-envy vamp into a harrowing drug tale with no effort at all. We get the ace one-two punch of “Surface Tension,” a cracked-folk number with a truly shitty violin hook and an obsession with the word “undertow,” and its guitar-overdriven instrumental coda, called “Undertow,” which does nothing but slam for six minutes.
Oh, you want more, do you? How about “Queen B,” which is how Motorhead and Slayer would sound if they were fronted by a petite bottle-blond? How about “Memphis,” which is as minimal as the new incarnation of The Breeders and has a beat you can dance to? The hot techno-bongo madness of “Firefly” with its sex-driven lyrics: “There’s no need to be confused / My heart’s on fire for you tonight”? It just keeps on going.
Okay, obviously I like this record; plus, it was recorded “without ProTools, loops, samples, studio musicians, big shots or lackeys.” So I vote yes on Jucifer, and you will too.
Jucifer: http://www.jucifer.com
