Juliet Huns – Behind the Scenes
URL: https://www.juliethuns.com/
Juliet Huns is a budding major talent who debuts with a three song EP entitled Behind the Scenes. Her musical interest is, obviously, directed towards pop and electronica, but Huns isn’t afraid to confound listeners’ expectations if it helps bring off a particular track. Huns and her collaborators on this EP know the limits of taste and never exceed them – not a single song on Behind the Scenes runs over four minutes while Huns still manages to pack worlds into these condensed musical works. Her voice is a lively, varied instrument. The production naturally centers on her singing, but she shows enough range that her vocal provides much of the musical fireworks powering the EP. This isn’t to say that the arrangements and backing tracks are perfunctory. Electronic music dominates the songs but there are unexpected flourishes and melody remains a big part of the EP’s success.
“Realized” introduces listeners to Huns in spectacular fashion. This is a bracing and often quite stirring emotional epic in miniature with a number of small crescendos built into the song and dynamics that help ensure it ends with its audience feeling exhilarated. Huns infuses her performance with a palpable amount of character and really makes the song swell with emotion at various key points. It helps that she has solid lyrics to work with as well. The words are conversational, but the song expresses itself with welcome clarity and Huns shows her attentiveness by bearing down on certain words while soft-peddling others. As mentioned earlier, none of the EP’s songs run over four minutes, but Huns manages to encapsulate whole worlds within a brief span of time. Moreover, she doesn’t with technique and passion to spare.
“Gone” begins as a bare bones effort propelled by Huns’ voice and the surprising presence of electric guitar. It is heavily treated with electronic effects and distortion, but it certainly conveys a great deal of the emotion reflected in the song’s lyrical content. This outright flirting with a full on rock style extends to a hard-hitting chorus where the guitar turns up more prominent than ever before. She structures the track in much the same way rock bands handle their arrangements. The song accumulates power and tension alike as it progresses. Behind the Scenes concludes with “Red Line”. It is much more similar to the EP’s first track than its second, but it’s more accurately described as a stylistic fusion of those two approaches. While electric guitar is absent from this performance, Huns pursues the same structural approach that listeners hear in “Gone”. There is a very dramatic build to this finale and Huns further strengthens it with an impassioned vocal.
This is the story of a dream coming true. With passion and work ethic, Huns has traveled far from the land of her birth and earns a seat at the pop music table by virtue of those aforementioned traits. Behind the Scenes gives us an unfettered glimpse into Juliet Huns’ heart and the resulting music is quite memorable.
9 out of 10 stars.
I-TUNES: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/behind-the-scenes-single/id1104655766
Shannon Cowden