Artist: Juliette And The Licks
Label: Hassle Records
Release: 2006
“Smash and grab I stole your heart, burnin’ rubber baby right from the start…” are the words that open this second album from the attention-grabbing American band Julliete And The Licks, and they also set the pace for the whole record, with a speed, a boldness and a craziness that burns through a good thirty minutes, or in short, across its entire length!
On top of that, the song titles alone, like Smash And Grab, Killer, Death Of A Whore, Mind Full Of Daggers, Bullshit King and others, make it clear this isn’t an album for the (over)sensitive. In a way it could be Juliette’s translation into music of the cult film Natural Born Killers, in which Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis play the married couple Knox (Mickey and Mallory) who go on a killing spree across the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.
Most of the songs are on the short side, which makes them all the more intense and direct, and having Dave Grohl himself behind the drums only adds to the explosive rawness that pours out the whole way through. The Licks, who keep digging through every rock trick in the book, are constantly on the heels of Mallory, a.k.a. Juliette, which fires her up even more and lets her easily prove that when it comes to the best, most “manly” rock, the kind that drips with tears, sweat and blood, plus a few other overflowing hormones (testosterone, for one), a woman is actually the perfect fit! And Juliette really is a sort of female Iggy Pop in this role! Well, at least as far as the lyrics go, with lines like “I’m spinning around the room and I can’t sleep, your little girl wants to fffffff”, she can keep company with the likes of PJ Harvey, Karen O or Merrill B. Nisker, better known as Peaches. Besides those obvious hints, with their wish for some very concrete “getting close”, she also likes to touch on other relationships between men and women. Preferably the socially conditioned ones, which set the traditional, (dominant) role of the man and the (submissive) role of the woman, “That 13-inch boot don’t make you a man!”, of course it doesn’t, it takes a whole lot more! The sociological stuff builds up to a kind of climax in Death Of A Whore, where misfortune once again befalls a woman, a woman who is treated as an object, as a dirty street, and who at the same time has nothing else to keep her alive. This song is also a kind of vocal peak, because after the brutally belted-out, repeating verse “Fuck, fuck you and fuck you some more…” it slides into a calm ending, “after the storm”, and for the first and really the only time, it shows Juliette with an incredibly soothing, comforting and regretful voice. Of course, for the character in the song it’s already too late, the damage is done, and any human action now passes into the mercy (or mercilessness) of the Almighty. On him, at least for now, Juliette isn’t counting. Right at the start of the next song, Purgatory Blues, she says she did strive for redemption but doesn’t really need it, with the words “I thought I needed redemption, but I let that thought go!”. A warrior to the end! And that’s what the album “Four On The Floor” is at its core. The issues hiding in the lyrics, which I touched on briefly, are there, but they’re secondary, or for the more analytical listeners. What’s front and center is undoubtedly the energy that makes this record so much fun, or better put, a must-have for livelier, quicksilver evenings!
Lineup
Juliette Lewis – vocals
Kemble Thel Walters – guitar
Todd Morse – guitar
Jason Womack – bass guitar
GUEST MUSICIAN:
David Grohl – drums
Production
Juliette Lewis & Dylan McLaren
Track List
01. Smash And Grab
02. Hot Kiss
03. Sticky Honey
04. Killer
05. Death Of A Whore
06. Purgatory Blues
07. Get Up
08. Mind Full Of Daggers
09. Bullshit King
10. Inside The Cage
Album Length: 33:46
