Brooklyn-via Hudson Valley singer songwriter Juliet Quick releases her new ‘Glass Years’ EP – five songs full of poignant storytelling, spare acoustics, playful synths, stirring strings and lap steel.
The EP opens with recent single ‘Circles’ and Juliet delivering the lines ‘Don’t know what to do with myself lately, I’m not that driven. Funny how everyone else seems to have an opinion’ and you instantly get an insight into her state of mind as she goes on to discuss being broken and a lack of coherent politics. Against a backdrop of sparse orchestration, she also reveals her personal worries: ‘I think I’ll stay in my bed until 5 in the evening. The sun never rose so I can’t find a reason for leaving’. ‘No Future’, written during a severe depression, finds Juliet thinking about the climate crisis and its effects on all of us (‘It’s too hot for February but it snowed last week so my street’s still buried in grey’; ‘There’s no future’) against a Lucy Dacus-esque soundtrack where sadpop meets alt rock.
‘Lose Me’ heads more into a traditional folk sound with dark lyrics about hands being wrapped around her neck and an unsettling question of ‘What is a woman for?’ before ‘The Tooth’ continues in this vein. This raw song finds Juliet giving an open and frank account of coming to terms with an assault by someone she thought was a close and trusted friend: ‘He crushed all my speech with his hand up my thigh’. The EP comes to a close with ‘Bright With Belief’, an emotional piece that moves from Juliet offering advice to a loved one based on her own experiences (‘You look like myself from a long time ago. I think I can see the way back’) to feeling more assertive and positive about the future, repeating the mantra ‘I want to be bright with belief’.
You won’t want to wait on Juliet Quick.
