by René Cobar (@renefcobar)
Julia Kugel, Crook Kid Coathanger of The Coathangers fame, is no kid anymore, and it shows in her sonic tour de force debut record, Derealization. The album is a departure from her previous work leading to an arrival worth witnessing. As a solo artist, now under the name Julia, Julia, Kugel displays a musical maturity that, built on the back of countless guitar fuzz riffs and vocal cord rips, now settles into a watery bed of soft melodies and softer poems sung in deep reflection.
On the first track, "I Want You," it is unmistakable that Kugel asks listeners to ascend the sonic, swerving stairs of her crisp-clean electric guitar arpeggios to a place of early emotional surrender. "I want you to greet the day with silver eyes/ And I want you to fall in love uncompromised/ I want you to dance the dance I dance around," she sings as you continue to climb while star-like piano keys mark how high you can go.
That euphoric elevation sustains in subsequent songs like "Forgive Me," with its airy instrumentation culminating in a whirlwind of harmonies. "Impromptu," with its floating piano notes, moves slowly and without vocals across the mind, giving way to a piercing heart-beat kick drum. Seamlessly that palpitation is infused with a rich bass line for "Fever In My Heart," which aptly named, turns up the heat of emotions. As Julia sings, "Am I losing myself?/I like it, I love it," desire simmers into enjoyment, and you become caught in that bliss.
Kugel has asked listeners, up to this point, directly or indirectly, to connect with her emotions and their own. That compliance yields hearty rewards and renders later songs like "Do It Or Don't" indulgent, and that's where she undoubtedly makes her mark as a solo artist. Why? Because the aim of solo work should be to create a sound you can indulge in, uniquely of the artist and in connection with its audience, something Kugel achieves halfway through her record, an impressive feat. Experience in music can achieve such a feat, and Kugel has tons of it, clearly playing a hand in the conception of her tracks and their unique, sometimes complex, layering. That takes a long-in-the-tooth approach to recording.
"Paper Cutout" builds on that artistic maturity with swells of its jungle-like ambiance that let Kugel's vocals punch through, each new sound layering atop the last like towering trees and slithering streams, a brilliant display of artistry and production alike. The record culminates on that ambient note with "Corner Town," cementing the album as a work of art that reaches a fever pitch and continues to boil, the listener the observant of each rising bubble so satisfying.
That is all fans can ask of a debut record: that the artist reveals with each heated molecule their artistic influences, ideas, feelings, and future directions; that they establish a sound they won't soon forget and will look forward to listening to again. Kugel does this and so honors her previous work while wholly maturing into a new artistic self.