Behind the Scenes is a great title. The three songs
on Juliet Huns’ debut album do take listeners behind the curtain of her heart
and reveal to anyone listening an artist of great passion and skill. She is a singer
with a wide emotional range; her voice traverses a path from passion to
playfulness, determination, and soulful reflection. She is accompanied by a
bevy of keyboard and synthesizer sounds that never strike listeners as having
been constructed thanks to their warmth and the lack of omnipresence in the
mix. Some performers in this area rely too much on those artificial sounds at
great expense to the songwriting or else fail to achieve an interesting balance
with broad-based appeal. This Kenyan born performer never sounds foreign to our
experience and the material on Behind the Scenes will resonate strongly with
anyone who has a beating heart.
The first song “Realized” is an ideal way to begin
the EP. It’s the closest thing to straight pop song that you’ll find on Behind
the Scenes and shows her authority with this sort of material is absolute.
Huns’ phrasing and her confident trajectory are the stuff that distinguishes
veteran performers, but she brings a surplus of energy to her vocal that
sparkles with youth. Even the relatively bitter experience related by the
lyrical content never turns into drudgery with her skillful voice manipulating
the lines for maximum dramatic impact. The traditional pop elements at play
here help immensely in putting the song over, particularly the effective
crescendos marking the song at its midway point and near its conclusion.
“Gone” bears some resemblance to the opener, but
Huns marshals different sounds to make her point. The quasi-guitar lines,
courtesy of the wealth of electronic instruments employed on this EP, give the
song a jaggedly edgy appeal. The chorus is probably the song’s high point and
doubles down on the guitar-oriented sound with Huns delivering a very emphatic
vocal. Like the other songs on Behind the Scenes, Huns never taxes her
listener’s patience and keeps the running time well within the lengths of the
typical pop track.
Behind the Scenes concludes with “Red Line”, a song
with many moods. The verses rely on a relaxed, laid back approach but the song has
excellent dynamics that build those restrained passages into an assortment of
memorably climatic moments before the final curtain. The imagery is a little
unusual for a familiar subject, but it gives a pleasantly fresh spin to
otherwise standard fare in the genre.
Juliet Huns lays her heart bare over the course of
these three songs. The synthesizer and keyboard work never deprive her voice of
its humanity or musicality and complement it quite well. Behind the Scenes is a
short release, but she never fails to explore a variety of moods and sounds to
make it sound like a much bigger experience than its duration might otherwise
suggest. We will be hearing more from Huns and, undoubtedly, it will continue
to build on the stunning success she’s achieved here.
9 out of 10 stars.
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/juliethuns
Michael Saulman
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