Juno - A Future Lived in Past Tense
(DeSoto)
Juno's call to arms is "Put on your punk belt and rock it for all the
square-cools," as proclaimed in the second track of their new album,
A Future Lived in Past Tense, "Covered With Hair." And Juno arms themselves
with not one, not two, but three guitars. While it's nice and easy to label
a band with three guitarists as a band with three guitars, this
information provides no insight--Radiohead, Bedhead, and VH1's Flickerstick
all use three guitars, and Juno has little in common with any of them,
except for perhaps Flickerstick. Instead, Juno rocks it old school style,
owing much to DC-area stalwarts Jawbox and Fugazi and post-Du, pre-WCW
Bob Mould.
Much like Sugar compared to Mould's previous band, this, Juno's 2nd album,
is much more like something you'd file under easy listening than their first
album, This is the Way it Goes and Goes and Goes. Perhaps this has something
to do with the fact that lead singer Arlie Carstens spent several months
in a halo and brace recovering from a broken neck, as such life
altering times often lead to a calmer, more sublime outlook. As such,
the nitro and petrol that was doused all over their debut, causing it
to be an exhausting, draining listening experience, is used in a much
more restrained manner here; some songs simply explode, but others are
allowed to simmer longer, making the album more of a journey and less
of a simple catharsis.
The first half of the album is made up of shorter (4 to 5 minute) songs
that pack as much sound as possible, similar to the band's first album.
The song that produces Juno's call to arms, "Covered With Hair," is pure
arena rock spectacle, pushing forward three loud rock guitars with
Carstens voice propelling an anthem against the latest supposed death
of rock. During the song's intro, you can even hear the whistling sounds
from the (fake) legions of fans. "A Thousand Motors Pressed Upon the
Heart" is almost as propulsive but does so in an entirely different
manner, relying on shoegaze-style clashing sounds from the guitars
to create a hazy cloud of atmospheric sound.
The second half of the album is where Juno increases their
reliance on the simmer, letting quiet sounds build into
a noisy release. "The French Letter" is a great example of this,
taking over six minutes to achieve its slowcore-style build.
The song starts off with a slow prodding beat, with bass and one guitar
adding subtle changes to create minor melodies and another guitar
using feedback to fill out the song and create tension as
Carsten's vocals are at the forefront. Eventually the song gradually
builds, mostly from the sound and tone of Carsten's vocals
as he repeats the same phrases but with more force and disdain, until
the song explodes with one guitarist creating a heavy metal style
piercing, fluctuating sound as the bassist creates some melody behind
all the noisy release. After this initial venting wears off, the song
continues in an equally exhilarating but more melodic fashion.
"We Slept in Rented Rooms (The Old School Bush)" follows a similar
roadmap, this time using a swaying melody during the quieter section
and building tension to but never fully giving way to the release.
During the quieter section that dominates the song, Juno uses what
could be described as a chorus section as the instruments play off
each other for a while and then merge together to create one sound.
Instead of building together as "The French Letter" did,
a Sonic Youth-style burst of guitar noise enters the song towards the
end and changes the mood of the song. After the guitar noise fades,
the band re-enters the chorus-like section in a pleasing afterglow.
Juno's main fault is that they sometimes seem overly serious and self-involved.
Song lyrics show much effort and are well-crafted but are often esoteric
or overly dramatic. It all comes to a head at "Things Gone and Things Still
Here (We'll Need the Machine Guns by Next March)" which uses just a
drum machine, simple atmospherics, and spoken vocals, trying to sound
like beat or Jim Morrison-style poetry but ending up sounding too much like
that song Chris Rock parodied with "No Sex in the Champagne Room."
In
other words, the band has some trouble determining when they're being
smart and when they're being pretentious.
However, there's no doubt that Juno manages to rock it for all the square-cools.
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