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Track Review: "Junkeee... Julieee..."

4:56 p.m. · December 13, 2007 · by Eli Halpern

As sick as I am of musicians whining about their varying degrees of strung-outedness, Blood on the Wall charm the shit out of me. Come on, guys, there's blood on the fucking wall. You can ask questions about how it got there or who it belongs to, but there's blood on the fucking wall. Singer Brad Shanks, who co-writes the songs with his sister Courtney, has a voice like a string of raw meat wrestled over by a couple of meth fiends. You can make your Pixies comparisons and pine for your early nineties, but you forgot that there's fucking blood on the fucking wall!

Besides, I like to think of "Junkeee...Julieee..." as more of a corruption of the eighties punk modality and the Beat Happening spirit than anything else. The bass line runs in circles like a confused child, three guitar chords spinning after it like his stupid dog and Shanks worrying at the melody with his teeth. Then the guitar "solo" comes in. It's actually more of a tickling session turned violent as it feeds into the well-considered conclusion of the song: "Junkie Julie/ She will never quit." Fair enough. Let's see if Liferz, Blood on the Wall's third album due out in late January via The Social Registry, can match the giddy shit-show that was Awesomer.