Photo Credit: Scott Montoya
Julia Kugel of The Coathangers shares her final reflective and shoegazey single titled “Do It Or Don’t”, premiering via American Songwriter. The track follows captivating lead-single “Fever In My Heart” and dreamy “No Hard Feelings”. All singles are taken from her debut solo LP Derealization under a new moniker, Julia, Julia.
Recorded at COMA, her and her husband’s home studio in Long Beach, CA, the album was a large part of healing for Kugel, after losing her voice. It also sees Julia playing nearly all the instruments and taking her first stab at engineering.
“Do It Or Don’t” is accompanied by a trippy visual directed by Jess Giles, and edited by Scott Montoya + Julia.
Derealization is set to release September 30, 2022 on Suicide Squeeze Records.
About the track + video Julia shares: “This song is about navigating difficult choices and keeping your head held high. Although I am in many ways obsessed with finding meaning in the meaningless, I had to confront the idea that maybe there is no plan, no destiny. That you have the choice, and that’s all you get. You find the reason to do it or not to- and that’s it. And it doesn’t necessarily feel good or right, but you make the choice and just keep moving forward. Eventually you will find your footing, and maybe even make up a meaning. I started with drums. I wanted a walking rhythm, a steady, solid molasses pace. The strumming guitar was layered next, again with a simple thumping groove. I wanted everything to feel square. The bass line gives a little more movement with subtle slides: like gentle sighs throughout the verses. The choruses are more emotional and rhythmic but still steady and comforting. I like the way it ends abruptly, done on purpose to be a bit jarring and unresolved.”
WATCH + LISTEN TO “DO IT OR DONT”
PRAISE FOR JULIA, JULIA
“…the debut solo record from Julia Kugel as Julia, Julia is shaping up to be a meditative—if not downright peaceful—capsule of the songwriter’s more introspective side.” – FLOOD Magazine
“While her previous work rested on the rambunctious and energetic side, she steers in the opposite direction with this new single, offering a more intimate and psychedelic experience. “Fever in My Heart” is like a drug that keeps drawing you deeper and deeper into its reign.” – Consequence
“…a cryptic, atmospheric tune about feeling completely ungrounded, but liking the freedom of being untethered from the rest of the world.” – Grimy Goods
Derealization: feeling detached from one’s surroundings; a conscious confusion about the “realness” of surrounding people and objects: a feeling of observing oneself outside of one’s body: feeling like one is living in a dream
If you can’t trust yourself, who can you trust?
This is the crucial question at the core of Julia, Julia, the moniker for Julia Kugel, founding member of garage punk icons The Coathangers and the dream pop duo Soft Palms. On her first solo full-length album Derealization, Kugel shifts her focus from collaboration and band dynamics towards a singular artistic vision and private self-discovery. Steeped in the beguiling pop elements of her past work, Derealization is a meditative deep dive into the mind of a person struggling to understand a crumbling internal and external world. The album traverses a landscape of ethereal folk, atmospheric deconstructed pop, and dubbedout country ballads, all centered around straightforward and direct lyrics. This juxtaposition of nebulousness and lucidity gives the album a sense of clarity emerging from the haze, an apt reflection of Kugel’s personal growth and journey toward self-acceptance.
Derealization is based on weaving the unreal, unsaid, and unknown into an undulating sonic fabric. Vocal layering and abstract instrumentation convey a blurred desperation to connect to an emotional and psychological focal point. Moody, dark, and sumptuous, the record is a flow chart of Julia Kugel coming into herself as an artist and songwriter. The album finds Julia playing almost all the instruments and taking her first stab at engineering at COMA, her and her husband’s home recording studio in Long Beach, CA.
“You know how touring musicians often speak of whether home is real or tour is real? Well, it can lead you to lose grasp on ‘reality,’ especially when touring is taken away and you are left to wonder if anything was ever real, including yourself. Like you we’re just playing a character,” Kugel says of her headspace leading up to the creation of Derealization. This trauma-induced sense of detachment was so severe that Kugel lost her voice, and, consequently, her confidence as an artist. Aided by vocal coaching and EMDR therapy, in addition to the healing power of surfing and music, she was slowly able to find her path back to creating. “Honestly, I kinda lost it, and through making this record I made peace with it and reconciled myself as a real person. I forgave myself and in turn forgave those around me. The song “Forgive Me” is the apology I wanted to say and to hear. I wrote every song from that place and gained the confidence I was pretending to possess.”
This raw and personal approach to the lyrics is present throughout Derealization. On the opening track “I Want You,” Kugel creates a woozy sense of space with reverb-soaked drums and spaghetti western guitars while she lists off her desires for a mysterious “you.” Is she actually listing off her desires for herself? For the people around her? As she repeats “do you feel it?” in the song’s chorus, it feels as if she’s conjuring a magical thread by which we are all connected, showing us how our desires are all the same. On “Fever In My Heart” the listener is treated to a lush, acoustic techno track detailing the exhilarating madness of an emotional breakdown. Simple truths percolate to the surface on “Words Don’t Mean Much,” as if clearing away the murk of platitudes and empty gestures. The journey continues on the detached and conflicted “Do It Or Don’t,” an alluring walk through the winding road of lonely choices. The final four tracks on the album originally appeared as limited edition releases under the White Woods moniker and serve as a tether between the present and past.
The name for the project—Julia, Julia—is a look in the mirror, a reflection of what is hidden and unanswered, of what is real and what is transient. The experience of living life not as you planned it but as it unfolded, and the mysterious, magical pain that creates meaning.
Suicide Squeeze Records is proud to offer up Julia, Julia’s Derealization to the world on September 30, 2022.
