July Talk

One Liner:  Leonard Cohen meets a lady friend for rock and freaking roll

Poster Position: 20

Thoughts:  The gravelly-voiced lead singer of July Talk, the sandpaper-throated Peter Dreimanis, definitely stands out when you start listening to this band. But its not all bourbon-soaked baritone, the second lead singer (Leah Fay) has a nice voice that reminds me of one of the Lumineers. Reminds me a little of the Edward Sharpe song "Home," except with Sharpe's voice replaced by a muppet.  I'm not a huge Leonard Cohen guy, so you may be making fun of me right now, but I bought the Natural Born Killers soundtrack back in college and loved it, including the two Cohen sounds where he grumbled his way along.
July Talk has one full-length album from 2015, a 2016 single, and an EP from 2014. Apparently, they were up for winning the Breakthrough Group of the year Juno award a few years back.  This is a good alternative rock sound.  The most popular track, from that 2015 album, is called "Summer Dress" and has 628k streams.

I can't imagine how someone can sing like that for more than a bar or two.  But somehow he makes it happen.  The two voices are what make the songs unmistakable, and the band is totally kick ass. Nothing too frilly or anything, but I like what they are putting down a lot.  The track with the most listens is also on both the new album and that old EP.  703k listens for "Guns + Ammunition."

Also good.  But more interesting to me is the brand new single, "Push + Pull," which only has 75k listens on Spotify, but may show us the direction of the band.  Oh, wait, its the exact same direction it was previously headed!  Nice.

You'd hate to get it twisted with a synth line or something.  I like the band a lot.  I'm not entirely sure about the continuous cousin-of-Oscar-the-Grouch delivery of the vocals, but I may be able to get around that to give these guys a shot live.