‘One day we were at Damnation Festival in front of all these people, then 24 hours later I was back at work, teaching kids how to make solar panels. That’s me: ridiculous and full of blood!'. Julie Christmas said it all, and the artwork for her new album, with its blurry photo, big smile and bloody mouth, just is the perfect illustration. A multi-faceted artist with indomitable energy, Julie Christmas is also far too rare: her previous bands Battle of Mice and Made Out of Babies disappeared with the 2010s, her first (and so far last) album under her own name dates released fourteen years ago and her collaboration with Cult of Luna on Mariner is already eight years old. Ridiculous and Full of Blood was eagerly awaited, and we dive in it with the particular pleasure of rediscovering an intimate storm that's not devoid of sharp angles to bump into and skin ourselves a bit.
Surrounded by musicians from prestigious bands (Johannes Persson from Cult of Luna and John LaMacchioa from Candiria on guitars, Chris Enriquez from Spotlights on drums, Andrew Schneider from Kenmode on bass and Tim Tierney from On the Might of Princes on keyboards), Julie Christmas is a tornado that tears down stylistic boundaries and leaps greedily from one mood to another. Not Enough sets the tone, with its underlying tension, its contained fury that simmers and explodes. She threatens, declaims, roars, minces: the demonstration is impressive, as much for the singer's vocal abilities as for the emotion she instils. Alternative rock, grunge, weird pop, doom, grunge: there's a bit of all that in Julie Christmas. However, there's a more pronounced uniformity in all these facets than on the first album, as if Ridiculous and Full of Blood were the slightly deformed (but magnificent) offspring of The Bad Wife and Mariner, losing along the way its more cabaret touches and theatrical numbers to focus on energy.
Although it doesn't get back to Battle of Mice's heaviness, Johannes Persson's presence is felt beyond the relief he gives to the guitars: his voice transforms The End of the World into a dizzying rollercoaster, but it is above all the progression of The Lighthouse, between dreamlike mysteries and furious exorcism, that dazes. The journey through Ridiculous and Full of Blood also takes us through the unifying anthem Supernatural and its poignant chorus, the neo-metal spurts of Thin Skin, the creepy-weirdo facetiousness of Kids and the unbearable tension of Blast and its ‘lalala’ as funny as disturbing. A zany, possessed narrator, Julie Christmas moves from Björk-style poetry to visceral eruptions a la Queen Adreena.
Of course, such generosity and madness can't make everyone happy, and Ridiculous and Full of Blood is a bumpy ride. At times you may feel a little weary or annoyed, but in the end these imperfections are an integral part of the whole: ridiculous and full of blood, aware of her cracks and flaws, Julie Christmas doesn't cheat and even seems to enjoy it madly, ripping out her soul and pinning it to each track with a touching and infectious monomaniacal determination. When she spills her guts in her shrieks, you can imagine her doing it with her hands all filthy and bloody, proud of the dripping, sticky picture that results. The result is overwhelming, cathartic, savage, terrifying, funny, introspective and totally mad.
At primary school, there's always a kid whose imaginary friends are dead children and who collects insects, giving them convoluted and fancy English names. That kid is Julie Christmas. But if you're here, reading this, then you know very well that this kid is also us, it's also you. Ridiculous and Full of Blood is the kind of album, whole, honest and delightful, in which all the broken toys, all the slightly lame loonies, all the cute but crazy things come together happily. ‘We’re all mad here, and you too must be, or you wouldn’t have come here’, so welcome to the craziest hurricane of the year!
