Bluejuice

Mon 17th Aug, 2009 in Features

A few hours after Fasterlouder spoke to Bluejuice co-vocalist Jake Stone, the band were set to partake in a photo shoot with skipping ropes. Oh, and Ralph bikini models. “It’s completely deranged. I don’t give a shit, it’s hilarious! As if I’m going to say no to that,” he says. “I’m sure that Thom Yorke would say no to that, but I’m not Thom Yorke, you know what I mean? If someone gives me the opportunity to jump rope with a bunch of half-nude women, I’m gonna say yes because it sounds so fucking crazy. And it’s also completely within keeping with the style of this band anyway.”

Bluejuice got their skipping ropes on for their hilarious mockumentary-style video for Broken Leg, the first single from their second album, Head of the Hawk, which comes out on September 18. The band, consisting of Stone and Stav Yiannoukas on vocals, James Hauptmann on drums, Jerry Craib on keys and Jamie Cibej on synth and bass, are favourites of the Sydney music scene and notorious for their raucous live shows, having torn up almost every stage in the city.

Working in the studio this time around with renowned Brooklyn producer Chris Shaw (Weezer, Bob Dylan, Public Enemy) they faced the familiar problem of trying to distil their unique live energy into a decent recording. “We did a lot of guide vocals in the front of the recording with the band playing, or recording drums and bass while everyone was playing everything at the same time. And we kept a lot of the vocals from that session, and then used the studio vocal that we did later on as a centre, and then wrapped all of those slightly out of tune guides around it. So it was like, we had all the recklessness and the energy of the band performing together, and also interesting harmonies, because we were trying a lot of things at the those times, but also the strong centre vocal which is sort of necessary for the more pop kind of delivery,” says Stone. “We sort of wanna be a radio band as much as we are a live band and we’ve found for us it’s easier to kind of balance that approach a little bit as well, you know?”

Through the recording of their first two EPs and first album, Problems, and the heights reached by their memorable hit Vitriol, Bluejuice remained unsigned, finally signing with Dew Process earlier this year. Stone says that being signed shouldn’t equate with accusations of selling out: “If there’s any change in the band to being more commercial pop band it really has come from an internal feeling of wanting to write pop music, not, you know, any external pressures or changes that have been brought about by having a label at all.”

He’s also keen to escape the idea of Bluejuice are a one-show pony, “To tell the truth, this whole year for me was really about getting our teeth into Australia, and consolidating our existence as a band beyond the success of Vitriol on radio, basically, and reminding people that we are really serious about doing this for a long time and Vitriol wasn’t a one-off hit, and that we can write a bunch of pop songs that people are gonna get into.”

And if nothing else, they get to skip rope with models. “It’s literally the characters [from the Broken Leg music video] achieving the heady heights of fame that they dreamed of! I’m sure it’s what they imagined for themselves and now their dreams are coming true at 4 o’clock this afternoon. That’s exciting for those fictional characters.”

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