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| Juliette & The Licks You're Speaking My Language Fiddler She's the oddly beautiful fireplug, one we imagine born of a long line of welfare recipients, speed dealers and alcoholic ex-high school football stars; always looking the part of a rangy white-trash-wins-lotto trailer court goddess. She could be a chick Axl if not for the fat heart thumping beneath her inelegant exterior. And think of it: Julilette Lewis was always a fuckin' rock star. Always. Even in her Natural Born Killers and Kalifornia roles, she had that elusive thing that drew you to her, a human element that lit you up. So it is that the odds were against this record from the get-go. Hell, what actor ever burped up a good record? Myriad milquetoast attempts have been downright unpardonable—consider musical forays by Keanu Reeves, Russell Crowe, Will Shatner and David Hasselhoff. On You're Speaking My Language, Lewis is a from-the-margins (she's famous, so what?) weirdo seemingly born to front a rock 'n' roll band, just like Axl, or Patti Smith or Chris Robinson, or Poly Styrene or Courtney Love or Johnette Napolitano. Her appeal, sexual or otherwise, has never been manufactured and, hence, nothing here sounds affected or forced. It's her tumultuous heart, and deceivingly simple soul that ride shotgun over her every singing (or shouting) word. And given Lewis' pop history—the stardom, the rehab, the movie star flings—we find a conflicted chick for the 21st century, with a real 21st century media caché, entertaining us from a cultural vantage that we could never possibly know. That Lewis is a left-field movie star who boffed Brad Pitt is not a disclaimer here. We want insight and experience from our songwriters; mainstream rock 'n' roll needs it. Haven't we chocked down enough from market-driven, song-free shitballs such as Jet, The Killers, The Donnas, and Franz fucking Ferdinand? Funny then that Lewis and her adroit, all-dude Licks (basically two guitars, bass and drums) are dolled up in virginal white on album's cover. Here, the goods arrive in both big, sing-song rock 'n' roll sides and tender lullabies. The range is impressive—hoary guitar riffs and fat drumming sidle up to teardrop piano clinks and counterpoint melody, all of which beds nicely Lewis' husky delivery and language. Arrested-development-to-redemption themes pump through this like recurring toxins in Robert Downey Jr.'s blood. On "Pray For the Band Latoya," there's getting-clean sentiment ("I remember crawling on the bathroom floor… Sweating, kicking, all alone"), and self-(re)definition is the thrust on the restrained "This I know." But it's title track that kick-starts the album's tone, its punk rock sonic scrub endorses Lewis' sly derision of celebrity culture, which successfully ties in anti-drug dogma: "All the boys and all the girls quit your drugs/Shake it up/Rule the world." The power-poppingly ace "American Boy" could sport a Lenny Kaye writing credit, even sounds like him chirping on the title refrains. Its guttered-up Beatle drone becomes Lewis' launch pad to channel Patti Smith and rasp mockery of absolute morality in politics. A quick snip of her emulating the vernacular of a rich, white republicans dovetails swimmingly with big-lunged lines like "You got your dicks in a twist" and "I ain't no politician/I ain't no politician/I ain't no politician." The latter bit even works as an I-won't-kiss-your-ass metaphor for the singer's an-innocent-among-sharks career. She's all summer-dress, girl-innocent in "the Seventh Sign," bereaving a doomed union gone south, and gives sultry surety and yearning in "By the Heat of Your Life." After one blazing throwaway ("So Amazing"), the record's 12 songs close fittingly on "Long Road Out of Here," a gentle, modern torch song that cleanly circumvents the maudlin, where we can believe that Lewis is the only one on earth who could sing a line like, "It's too late/All the lights are out on the kids at play." When she caps the song with a hoarse, "Oh, I guess I'll just wander on and on," we understand that salvation might be just around the corner. By record's end, we believe that much. This could be the best rock 'n' roll record of the year .
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—Brian Smith June 2005 |
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