Julie’s Haircut: Radiance Opposition

With the world rejecting artistic endeavours as fiercely as it ever has, it’s hard to imagine that a band like Julie’s Haircut have been plying their trade for 31 years.

Quintessential lifers, the Reggio Emilia, Italy six-piece have been a revolving cast over their 10-album reign, and while it’s this fluidity that may have, at times, been to their detriment, on the flipside, it’s this intangible approach that has made them one of the vital pillars in modern-day psychedelia.

Now led by Anna Bassy – the Italian-Nigerian singer joining the recognised core of Nicola Caleffi, Luca Giovanardi, Andrea Rovacchi, Andrea Scarfone and Ulisse Tramalloni – on Radiance Opposition, Julie’s Haircut add new strings to their bow. Bassy’s performance in particular, openings up new portals for her band mates to follow, which ultimately feeds into the Julie’s Haircut mantra of moving their art forward at all times.

With the album title inspired by the Chinese book of divination, the I Ching, it’s this ritualistic nature that is at the heart of Radiance Opposition. Campfire jams that see Julie’s Haircut offer a renewal of hope. The skinny motorik I Can See The Light, a sing-speak affair as Caleffi and Bassy part with a tale where fires in the night and running away from the light dominate. Spring Moon is woven with the same thread; this time led by Bassy with more komische-inspired echoes and lyrical vignettes where generations and long roads form as a rallying cry for collectivism.

And it continues on Unit Circle – chiselled out psych-rock for campfires, as Julie’s Haircut forge a path to unity (“One is one / Two is one / And we are one in the human circle”). And Wounds feels like you’re sitting around said campfire. The band, thriving across the same vast lands as Can and Faust long before them.

Elsewhere, and Julie’s Haircut bounce from one sound world to the next. The warm fuzz of The Earth Knows, emitting soft colours with something designed for candle-light dinners and low volumes, while To the Sacred Mantle is like smoke drifting through the atmosphere, as Bassy cross-pollinates psych and trip-hop.

Unlike Extinction of the Sun, which sees Julie’s Haircut cranking up the pressure with the kind of rumbling collage that fellow exponents, Pallbearer Industry, have mastered. And on the final pivot, AM Carpet Candlelight embodies the spirit of Radiance Opposition, with a hippified communal folk number that is a fitting finale to this shapeshifting odyssey.

Maintaining their reputation as the “sound carriers”, while psych-rock has become too stagnant with many of its practitioners offering paled versions of their younger selves, the same can’t be said of Julie’s Haircut. Always trying to outdo their former selves, it’s never diminishing returns, and alongside Bonnacons of Doom, they continue to be one of the very few voices in this sound world that is worth one’s time.

Radiance Opposition is out now via Superlove / Weird Beard. Purchase from Bandcamp.