Customer Reviews

It Might Like You

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Her voice is enchanting. Each song tells a story.
overall, an engaging and enjoyable album.
my three favorites are The Story, Fear of Flying and Night of the Living Dead.
also lovable are Outer Space, Married to Life, Billy Elliott, Dancer, well, pretty much all of them.
the tracks i sometimes skip are Words Won't Save You, and Side Effects of Growing up & Carousel. but that's mainly because i want to rush to Fear of Flying.
Fear of Flying is one of my favorite songs. i never tire of listening to it.
FYI, Put Your Headphones on is a novelty track, no music.
i originally stumbled upon and purchased this album about a year ago from a different music site.

I can't quite recall how I found out about Julia's music, except that it was through some type of puzzle or riddle website long ago back when she had just released Storm EP and it was mentioned off-the-cuff by the webmaster, but I'm delighted to see her progress from Storm to here. It may sound a little pretentious to talk more about the artist than the music, but keep in mind with this review that you're not hearing the music and analyzing it in a sense of meter or rhythmic quality as much as you are listening to Julia sing and express herself. You might read that as "oh she has no musical discipline" or "oh her songs aren't REALLY songs" but it's not what I'm trying to say at all; her songs are very musical, but she will fit the music to her story and not the other way around.

I hear a lot of musicians take their songs, their stories they want to tell, and then try to cram the story into the music so it's precise and can stay within the confines of their guitar tabs or music sheets. They snip parts out, rewrite lyrics to be obscure, or have insufficient lines of mystical words that make the song very difficult to interpret (think Blinded by the Light by Bruce Springsteen; it's a great song about his life but is the exception that proves the rule and shows Bruce's strengths as a writer). Julia doesn't do this, and her songs are very free-flowing because of it, and it gives them the rare quality of genuine, heartfelt music.

Okay, specifics: I'm a personal fan of the upbeat tunes like Carousel and Night of the Living Dead. Carousel gives me a sense of childlike simplicity and evokes memories of my times spent at the Fair when I was younger and a music box my mother received during Christmas from my brother, all very happy memories. Night of the Living Dead at first gave me this sense of irony about the whole song, that it's a very happy-sounding tune while singing about this dreadful subject of humanity's apathy towards each other and Earth that will end in tears if nothing is done to stop it; this hits very close to home for me, but I changed my mind about the "ironic" part when I realized she sings about it in a positive and encouraging sense rather than one of dread or foreboding.

I'm personally not a fan of Dancer. That's not to say I don't appreciate or enjoy the song, but it isn't to my taste, and I honestly wish I could offer up something more to justify why I don't like it other than "I just don't," but I'm not sure why myself. This IS a review, and should be expected to be opinionated regardless. Perhaps it's the music itself, that it doesn't quite click in my head and makes it hard to follow, maybe I feel anger over hearing the story in the music (as everyone in the song seems to be a hurtful person), but it is that sense unpleasantness that gets to me, and yet I can't put a finger on it.

As for Amazon and such, delivery was quick, shipping was free for me and although I wish I had bought a copy when Sellaband was taking funds for recording it, I can't complain and I'm glad Amazon offered it up for sale here (I was honestly expecting it to be more expensive as it was bought/shipped overseas).

I'm not sure if Julia reads reviews on her music, but if she were to ask me her opinion I would tell her not to lose her expression and emotion in her music, because it's a rare thing that a musician can do without compromise. I've had a lot of fun experiencing her through her music, and I will say it's helped drive me to be a better musician myself.