What we do on accident hurts--J. David reviews Juliet's self-titled debut album.

"Juliet" by Juliet
2019 Cellar Records--10 Tracks
Listen here

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​Someday we’ll wake up and collectively want to be here. Someday sadness won’t be so temperamental or pervasive. I guess you can call it luck—making it through the day. Or maybe grace. Or the parachute’s deployment. Or the assumption our sun’s gonna come up tomorrow—whatever it is, we’ve got a gimmick to stick between our sock and the sole of our left shoe. Believe this, that when Otis Redding sang try a little tenderness he probably meant something about the failure of a hard heart to do anything but rot. We’ve all been missing someone for years; drunk in a bar never sounds the same as the music saved me ten thousand nights in a row.

I get it, I really do—the propellers stuck to your moon-boots, the way it feels to take your collar off at night. Freedom smells like the first time your mother made apple pie. I wouldn’t mind getting lost with you sings Juliet, in her self-titled debut album, we’ve already missed the exit you and me, we got lost in the song we were singing (“Lost”). Freedom asks of us sacrifice, and perhaps, we’ve been hacking away at parts of ourselves for a future all along. Check the lifeboats, there’s music playing from every boom-box and we’re all singing there’s an endless moment of silence…what will you do if your performance brings you no fame, we have different darknesses but they all haunt us the same (“Silence”). So let’s invite the monsters under our beds onto it and make friends with them, it’s been so long since anyone has loved them—yes, as much as Juliet’s debut album is about growing up and finding your place in the world post-adolescence, it is equally so considering the implications of loving yourself.

Let’s pretend we made Lucy Dacus drink sunshine for a year, this is how we’d go about manufacturing Juliet McCowin, the artist behind the Juliet moniker. A twenty year old from Youngstown, she fronted the Basement Society, a folk group from the same area, before going solo and signing to The Cellar Records, a small production studio and record label based in the region. Vocally reminiscent of the sonic overlap and controlled tremble of a young Taylor Swift, her range and technique closely resemble that of Maggie Rogers, all the while reaching for moments in the lyrics that sound like if Julien Baker wrote happy songs. While a little green and inconsistent on certain tracks, Juliet has moments of closeted intensity aching to edge their way into the music—her timbre and vocal register shine in both “Silence” and “Lost.” She possesses an endearing and genuine vocal quality urging you towards laying back with your feet up or taking a lengthy drive on a backroad at night. When she sings, it feels as if you’ve made a new friend.

While an overall sound project, at times the writing will border on cliché, I’m an open book but you’re illiterate (“Me and You“), I cut off all my hair and you never even noticed (“Me and You”), you unexpectedly came in my life, a different kind of different (“Different”). But these moments are overwhelmed by pointed lyrics overly familiar with grief, like we both know self-pity isn’t a party for long (“Elephants”) or I came in with presuppositions, the scars that you didn’t cause (“Different”), your entire life doesn’t have to be proving a point (“Anymore”).

The album serves as a treatise on growing up and love, but doesn’t shy away from heftier moments—“Elephants,” the best written song on the album, negotiates the relationship with a family member who has just attempted suicide, while other tracks address the singer’s struggles with a brain tumor. Juliet’s songs have solid narrative structure and a meandering eye that finds its way back to the point. Her voice shines on “Silence” and left me wanting more moments like that peppered throughout the project, where her voice rollercoasters between notes with accuracy and tackles more difficult maneuvers. I think Juliet would do well to go for broke and generate larger vocal presentations that elevate before sliding down into a comfortable vocal pocket, these would serve her content well. Yes, there are a few skippable songs, but in its entirety the album is cohesive and impressive for such a young musician’s debut, something to be proud of. I have “Anymore,” “Silence,” and “Elephants” added to my library for perpetuity. What these tracks share is that they stumble upon the fact that what we do on accident hurts. At this age, we’re all learning as young adults to carry conditionality while discovering that the self is a moment-to-moment negotiation we’re unable to run from. Juliet gives us the choice—face the reckoning of self, heart-breaks and all; or start trying to escape.