PLEASE CALL OFFICE FOR AVAILABILITY: 08447 707 788 DATES TO BE ANNOUNCED:
You're Speaking My Language is the name of Juliette and the Licks' full-length debut album. The Licks have put their money where their mouths are, playing all over Europe, where Juliette has confirmed: "All you need to hear is that drum beat and that pumping guitar riff and it's on - you don't even need words."
Juliette's body language, too, speaks volumes. Whipped into a frenzy by guitarists Todd Morse and Kemble Walters, bassist Paul Ill and drummer Jason Morris, she is a whirling dervish, flinging herself the length of the stage, kicking ass and taking names, dropping to her knees, commanding the crowd like a tent-revival preacher hurling lightning bolts of fire and brimstone. "I'm not just gonna stand there and look pretty - I'm gonna make you feel something," she insists.
According to Juliette, the Licks' first release, the EP Like a Bolt of Lightning, was "a taste of our live energy; it was a teaser to get people out to the live show" (a teaser that nonetheless inspired a Village Voice reviewer to write approvingly, "[Juliette] displays all the front-bulge bravado of her cock-rock idols, adopting their arrogance and wild-child blood lust, only to trample over them" [March 15, 2005]). You're Speaking My Language, on the other hand, is testimony to what that live show has wrought.
"Were much more developed as a band and as songwriters because we've had two years of live-show experience," Juliette attests. The Licks hold fast to their hooky garage-rock roots - reverberations of early Animals, Kinks and Stooges, as well as Juliette's insinuations of Patti Smith and Chrissie Hynde, linger - but the steadfast reliance on heavy guitar riffs and strictly straight-ahead rock rhythms has given way to a more diverse sound.
Among the You're Speaking My Language cuts Juliette cites by way of example is the heartbreaking "A Long Road Out of Here." "I wrote that after a friend died," she confides. "It's a pretty epic song for us, about six minutes. We used the first take of the vocal. The whole song is very personal to me." On the other end of the spectrum is the two-minute "So Amazing," which the Licks wrote during their 2004 stint on the Warped Tour. "That's a banging, kind of gospel-punk track," Juliette notes. Somewhere in between is the love song "By the Heat of Your Light." The singer calls it the Licks' "experimental track," explaining: "The production is very sparse and unresolved-sounding. And there's a speaking track underneath. It reminds me of a letter. I wanted the sound to match the feeling of the lyrics, which are about a love affair that was never finished; it just drifted away."
Asked about the further thematic thrust of You're Speaking My Language, Juliette says there's no particular through-line, though she does mention "Money in My Pocket" as key to one of the band's goals. "I love trying to impart some kind of positive message," she states. "'Money in My Pocket' is kind of rallying you to have a good time despite your struggles and to put your fate in your own hands. It goes, 'Money in my pocket/ Settin' fire to a second-rate dream/ Cash it or check it/ You gotta change that dead red light to mean green.' People think because I'm an actress I can't relate to the nine-to-five grind, but I can; I just relate to it in a different way."
Juliette writes all the lyrics and melodies for the Licks' songs and leads the group's overall musical direction. For her, that means "allowing the band to be creative and contribute as much as they can to the songwriting." "They all come from different places musically," she adds, "and they all have different talents. Todd writes these really catchy, rhythmic kinds of things; Paul comes up with incredible bass lines - I could listen to this record just for the bass lines; Jason brings a soul/R&B background into the mix; Kemble adds a vintage rock flavor. Put that all together, and that makes the sound of the Licks."
"I'm really into writing from rhythm," she continues. "The entire phrasing of 'Money in My Pocket' was inspired by this crazy drum beat Jason came up with. Or one of the guys will play a riff and it will just hit me, and I'll hear lyrics. The first line of 'You're Speaking My Language' goes, 'I know you think you know me better than that.' That line just came to me, and then the rest of the song sort of wrote itself. Then you shape it; you say, 'What story is this telling?' The way we write reminds me of cavemen sitting around a fire. One starts slapping a rhythm out on his knee and another one starts imitating the guitar sound and someone hums a melody - you can write a song that way. You just vibe off each other. You don't even need instruments."
But this isn't just any group of cavemen. "I know I got very lucky putting this band together," Juliette allows. "I wanted to experience collective creative energy, and we write and play really well together. Chemistry has everything to do with it. And there are no egos. Everyone's in it to win it and for the love of the music. Period."
Because Todd, Kemble, Paul and Jason are all seasoned musicians who know their way around a studio, the Licks chose to produce You're Speaking My Language themselves. Says Juliette: "I wanted to find out what the Licks sounded like pure, with no additives. I didn't want to incorporate anybody else's point of view about how we should sound. I'm extremely protective of this music because this is a creative emancipation for me. Plus, we have a totally DIY mentality - we pool our resources very effectively - and making this album was no different."
"I had a specific vision for each song," she reveals, "and when we were in the studio, I'd bring in certain records - Lucinda Williams, Grace Jones, Blondie, Pretenders - and say, 'This is how I want the vocals to sound on this track.' We all brought records in; we used music as reference points to communicate with each other." Mixer Steve Churchyard (Pretenders, INXS, Siouxsie and the Banshees) and engineer Buck Snow, both of whom Juliette calls "amazing," attended the birth of You're Speaking My Language.
She says the purpose of the album, and of the Licks in general, is to move people. "At the very least, we want to entertain you, give you a good, hungry live show," she maintains. "But at the very most, we want the music to enlighten you or help heal you during troubled times. I know that sounds grandiose, but that's what music has done for me. When I was in my early 20s, Bob Dylan and Neil Young held my hand during the darkest period of my life. Music can lift you up. That's what we wanna do."
Calling herself an "emotionalist," she says evoking an emotional response is the same thing she does as an actress. "But with music, you cut right to the chase," she relates. "It's a much more visceral experience. And with movies, I'm hired to tell another person's story. But with music, what you're hearing is my voice; what you're seeing is my vision."
This would suggest that Juliette has complete control over what happens with her music, but it's the volatility of the bond between artist and audience that seems to thrill her most. "You never know how the audience is gonna respond," she confirms. "We had a show in Cardiff [Wales] where the audience was literally writhing as one mass. There was this feeling of danger - not hostility, but excitement. The crowd was flowing up onto the stage, pushing the monitors forward, and we just kept rocking. The show was on the verge of spinning out of control. We did not know what was going to happen. That unknown is what rock and roll is all about."
The Licks' ability to ride this uncertainty was forged on the Warped Tour. "That's how we earned our stripes as a proper live band," Juliette says. "It was so unpredictable. We never knew when we were going to play, but we always had to be ready to give it. We had to hustle because there were so many bands playing. We had to work for our audience because if we didn't, they'd just go see somebody else."
A similar scenario is depicted in the video for "You're Speaking My Language." Directed by Alex Smith (Coldplay, The Darkness, Futureheads), it reflects Juliette's relish for "being on the road, going into sweaty, divey places, never knowing what the audience is gonna be and seeing the judgment on their faces."
"In the video, we're the underdogs," she says. "It shows that no matter how small the club, we'll play like it's an arena; no matter how indifferent the audience, we will win them over. We're saying, 'Juliette and the Licks are here to spread the gospel. This is the New Testament of rock and roll. We're gonna bring everything we possess and make believers out of you.'"
