Review Summary: The band that does everything.
To begin with a question, can certain elements of rock, hip hop funk, electro and the preverbal kitchen sink all come together and create a delicious recipe of music and not create a deflated lemon meringue?
Yes, yes they can.
Bluejuice is a five piece band from Sydney, Australia making music that is suitable from club gigs to outdoor festivals. When listening to
Problems expect to find down-tempo hip hop, ska-tinged pop, and pounding disco, all laced with the band’s winningly tongue-in-cheek attitude. With the bluntly aggressive opener in ‘Get Me Down’, we get a glimpse of the fuzzy synth and hip hop felt drums with a degenerative breakdown, which is a sound only Bluejuice can concoct.
But it gets more hectic... As ‘Get Me Down’ begins to end, lines with break neck speed and punk rock riffage collide with bomb-squad breaks conclude the relentless onslaught. While this is not always the greatest notion, seeing tunes like ‘Midnight At Band Camp’ ‘Mountain Goat’ and ‘Motorcycle Accident’ don’t quite get the style mixing quite right as the aforementioned tracks so brilliantly do.
All through
Problems you can find evidence of the mix and match of so many different stylistic influences. ‘Back Breakin’ mixes hip hop with a grimy cabaret piano, while ‘We Get It Right’ is a genuine attempt and turns out to be very well made Australian hip hop track, though is let down in its attempted to try and be ‘gangsta’, as such. Though it’s not just in the hip hop range that Bluejuice excel, but also with their funk styled songs, ‘Hunnamunnafeeb’ – the mouthful that it is – and ‘Let’s Kill It’ prove this, with amazing vocal delivery, which is almost breathtaking. Even with all the different styles floating around, there is such a stunning level of complexity and musicianship on show. For instance, there is the reggae stunt of ‘The Reductionist’ or the gigantic intro of ‘Phantom Boogie’ that turns quite rapidly into a quite catchy funk-rock track.
Then of course is the absolute ripper track that gained Bluejuice all the attention in the first place, being ‘Vitriol’. Vitriol is filled with jaunty keys and a funk rock filled rhythm section that Bluejuice is able to deliver so well. ‘Vitriol’ also adds another style to the resume with its Indie felt vibe; it delivers hooks and is full of brilliance.
‘Vitriol’ is, believe it or not, a track that is able to solve
Problems mixed confusion of genres into one song as it is indicative and always challenging the boundaries and defying anything that lay before that classed genres. The DIY rock-hip-funk-electro-indie hybrid that Bluejuice are, show that they are here for the fun of it, but are still able to write some really great songs.
