Astrale Presenta: Julie's Haircut + Sugar For The Pill

Julie's Haircut Active since the late nineties, Julie's Haircut is a band from Emilia, northern Italy, devoted to spacey, hypnotic sounds. The band’s music has evolved in time, through a series of albums and EPs, from the garage-rock soulful energy of their debut towards more experimental grounds, reaching a kaleidoscopic eclecticism that spans rock and psychedelia, from electronic to minimalism, with echoes of jazz, ethnic, dub and drone music. They have been making music with Damo Suzuki, Sonic Boom, Philip Corner, Valerio Cosi and more.

Sugar For the Pill Post punk and shoegaze are my dark bread and sensitive butter. Just give me overdriven guitars, dreamily psychedelic sounds, and pristinely fragile vocals, and you have me at hello. But I need something more from a new indie dream pop band to keep me hooked. I need the sentiment, but not the pure nostalgia, I need my adolescent memories, but with a twist. And Greece’s Sugar For the Pill fit right in with that description. “Now this city is ours. Here, in some way, we are young forever”, Vana Rose sings on their newest track ‘Colours’ (May 2023) about being young and feeling disconnected from the world, musically and lyrically connecting the Pretty in Pink generation with the one in Sex Education. Sugar For The Pill cleverly build their songs from a number of traits picked from shoegaze’s greats, having an especially soft spot for early 90s icons Slowdive, to which they find inspiration for their name. They employ atmospheric vocal harmonies, rippling processed guitars, and an ambient production sensibility that’s delicate but never frail. More importantly, they deliver on the legacy of The Cure and the ethereal wave that started with Cocteau Twins, and transform it in ways that, quite simply, sound cool. Formed in Athens in 2020, the band released its official debut album, ‘Wanderlust’, in 2022, a record that delivers consistently across all ten of its tracks with hooks that don’t let up (e.g. the catchy ‘Quicksand’, the frenetic chorus of ‘Drink Conium’, or the minimalist ‘Falling Back To You’). There’s a sweeping feel here – just think of dazzling crescendos with persistent bass and drums – but also a fragility, as if the melodies might crumble right before you. Masterful and emotionally rich, it’s impossible not to listen, and then revisit, their music.