From Los Angeles (US)

julie emerged fully formed on “flutter,” a tightly wound grunge-pop rager with Pourzand and Elizabeth trading vocals, both pleasingly apathetic. That song, like most of the rest of their subsequent songs, was propelled by a totally ballistic drum performance by Lee. They were influenced by Sonic Youth, clearly, but they had little interest in that band’s atonal wandering. Julie’s power was controlled out of the gate.

Over the next three years, the group released a handful of EPs and singles, experimenting with slight shifts in sound. One song might skew more tortured emo, another more triumphant shoegaze. The brusque sheen of the Big Muff pedal is ever present, but they never overindulge in fuzzed-out theatrics. They never noodle too long. Only one song on the band’s debut album, my anti-aircraft friend, clocks in at over five minutes—and then only by three seconds. It seems that in a generation (or two) since the heyday of their preferred breed of experimental rock music, julie have mastered the task of making songs that feel sprawling and massive, but which in reality bloom and dissolve in short order. You can fit a lot of julie songs into one “Diamond Sea.” No radio edit needed.