“Laid” by July Talk (Review)

Apr 15

Angelic, feather-soft songbird vocals layered with spine-chilling, onyx-axe-sharp vocals, -blazing and iron-welded industrial instrumentation, and fragile, pondering imagist lyrical storytelling, define Toronto, Ontario’s July Talk on paper. If one has the honour of seeing July Talk in the flesh, an eruptive, enigmatic live performance comprised of melodramatic dramaturgy of a lover’s quarrel, crackling platinum lightning effects, and transforming tidal orchestrals is the tradition. The band is a constellation of Leah Fay's sugar snowflake voice; Peter Dreimanis' molasses-drenched black pepper voice and guitar; Ian Docherty's firefly-clawed amber rhythm guitar; Josh Warburton's brown-sugared bass; and Danny Miles' glistening, leaping coral salmon drums. July Talk introduced the sugary, ruby juice of watermelon that drips down one’s chin ("Summer Dress"), scraping blushing skin to spill warm blood for the first time ("Paper Girl”), hiding dark ember whiskey in cherry cola bottles behind your mother's back ("Guns + Ammunition”), and skipping smoothed stones off of lakes on their frigid, ebony-grey crags ("The Garden”). Touch dove to the everlasting sting of thick, bitter black cherry wine ("Push + Pull”), shaking fingers singed in the perfume of star anise and brown parchment paper ("Beck + Call”), a hotel room's crimson cushions and grimy porcelain-tiled floors (“Picturing Love”), and averting one's guilty eyes from the cream lace-ribboned cross mounted on the wall ("Lola + Joseph”).

2020's Pray For It shifted to harp's finger-crossed, yet silvery pearl hope (“The News”), shy patter of an angel's wings fighting the dooming ring of a chapel's bell ( “Good Enough”), and plum-red poison ivy bass tremors kniving the loins ("Governess Shadow”). And, on 2023’s Remember Never Before the orchestra of punk's bones crowning oceans' depths ("Twenty Four Hours”), searching smoke of bashful, hiding, stripped strings ("Repeat”), and hymns of a rooster's cry to the inhaling dawn ("After This”). To bid good morning to 2024, July Talk had put out on their trusted, laurel-crowned Six Shooter Records label the Solstice EP - an EP composed of covers, whose garnet-encrusted diadem is the fourth number, James' "Laid." Faithful, to "Laid's" lush, sage-green, bohemian ode to nightshade tonic-wielding, onyx tulle disappearance act. Half romantic and traditional, as a meadow of clovers and budding bluebells, and half modern, post-industrial in a glowing bronze knife daring to blush a ripening strawberry, and and to quiver with the shivering of ripe bronze arrows.

Fay's part is a sweet-pea frosted in icicles, stoney but satiny in soft spots, shying away from and crinkling at the touch, and shining with fractals of light - as is a natural, and beloved, quality of Lea's voice (found, even in her speech). The gristlier temper of her vocals, announcing on the deepest, roughest notes and blooming like nightshade since July Talk began unapologetically embracing their political in 2020, fits in the palm of the group's approach to the vintage 90s single. Peter's blazing iron, spiny ivory-caressed baritone voice has become enchanted by Lea's grating of knives against an ebony block - the two throwing a twin flame duel. Dreimanis' trusty soft dark-wood and onyx-armoured guitar is an iron axe, cutting his slender fingers, droplets, then spigots of blood enveloping his strings and polishing and muddying his playing, in fragile equal measure. His voice, matching. Miles gives emerald-green fern-drumming, grasping the North star's grace and icy opulence in his twinkling cymbals, his bass drums glinting in the sweating silveriness of a dagger belonging to and imprinted in the touch of Leah. Docherty and Warburton's rich bass notes like flapping crow wings drawn to a pot of thick honey, and swan feather keys fluttering as lace curtains in a spookily autumn caressed wind, that speak as if they know buried secrets. Of a stack of cards, they play a slight of hand.

In July Talk tradition, their story digs into the flesh of James' song, needling to the heart of a dark poetic landscape: around weeping angel sculptures, the Leah and Peter cat-and-mouse with their chosen blade. Javelining marble hands, and sharpening their ears for the crinkle of a leaf, caress of the wind around the other's body. A twilight romance, blood-red rose and knife-sharp-thorned. Dagger-wielding Ophelia and a romantic, nightshade-drunken Hamlet staggering after the whip of her floor-length skirt. Dark foliage, thick of prickling, stinging pine needles, blotting out the sky, twisting, deeply wrinkled oak limbs constructing a labyrinth to be wandered through. Royally stained chestnut walls, ornamented in lusciously golden-framed dark academia knowing. Touching the softness and feeling the warmth of a fragile wildflower's meadow, but never truly reaching it.