Plumbiferous Media

Juice Water, the third album by singer/songwriter Erica Quitzow’s solo project Quit­zow, was released on Tues­day. With Juice Water, Quit­zow has cre­ated a delight­fully ener­getic, elec­tric album that, while defin­ing its own electronic-art rock genre, dis­plays every bit of her cre­ativ­ity in a way that makes the album extremely enjoy­able. Juice Water is alter­nately a sim­ple and a very com­plex plea­sure, but it never ceases to be a pleasure.

The often sim­ple lines of Juice Water clearly come from pure elec­tronic dance music, lend­ing them their out­stand­ing lev­els of energy, even on the slower, lighter tracks (which them­selves, are per­haps slightly over­whelmed by the hard edge of the per­cus­sion). Vari­a­tion, how­ever, is always extremely present through Juice Water, from the unex­pected and out­stand­ing use of the gui­tar on “Race Car,” to the dras­tic dif­fer­ences between the com­plex and the sim­ple, even in the course of sin­gle tracks.

But what equally defines Juice Water is the tran­si­tions between the many, com­pletely con­trast­ing sec­tions of every sin­gle track. Not only does this place Quitzow’s style in a genre of its own, but it also keeps the entirety of Juice Water engag­ing and com­pletely inter­est­ing (save per­haps for “The Cut,” Juice Water’s longest track by nearly a minute). Juice Water has more than a few odd issues, from the some of the less suc­cess­fully mesh­ing synth parts of “Cherry Blos­som,” to the occa­sional over­sim­plic­ity of tracks like “Talk to Me.”

Quitzow’s voice is quite pos­si­bly one of the most vari­able ele­ments of Juice Water, thanks to an array of well-placed effects. How­ever, one thing stays con­stant through­out the album: the incred­i­ble level of energy Quit­zow expresses in every word. Whether her voice is tak­ing on the elec­tronic buzz of “Cherry Blos­som” or the sweep­ing sound of “Race Car,” Quitzow’s voice directs the music expertly. Fad­ing changes between vocal effects, such as on “More Keith Richards,” add a very unique sound that is simul­ta­ne­ously fluid and edged - an elec­tric wave of sorts, car­ry­ing the power of Juice Water behind it.

Quit­zow tends towards sim­ple, expres­sive (and often quite amus­ing) lyics, putting the same energy into the words of Juice Water as she does the voice. The lyrics alter­nate between the descrip­tive: “Cherry blos­som / Missed by a rag­ing storm” and the sim­pler, hon­est: “It’s 3 AM / We’ve drank too much whiskey.” What­ever the tone, Quit­zow does an excel­lent job match­ing the words to the tone of the music - whether it’s the ques­tion­ing tone of “Talk to Me” or the aggres­sive non­cha­lance of “What­ever.” Occa­sional over-repetition does slightly weaken the lyrics, but it’s gen­er­ally made up for by the skill with which they’re woven into the music. All together, Juice Water is quite well-written, and always entertaining.

Even with its few flaws, Juice Water would be entirely mer­i­ta­ble solely on its unique­ness. As it is, Juice Water is also an extremely catchy, engag­ing album. Lyrics such as the play­ful tran­si­tion­ing between num­bers, let­ters, and words on “The Cut:” “A, B, you know what I see?” and “One, two, I know you / I know that you know me too, three four…” mix per­fectly with the ever-changing vocals. Addi­tion­ally, except in one or two cases, the entirety of the tran­sient sound some­how matches the sto­ries Quit­zow tells per­fectly. Juice Water is, for all its purity, an incred­i­bly com­plex album, and is in all set­tings, more than worth the listen.

This post is tagged 80-89, Quitzow