In 1995, , then 14 years into their career, and on the cusp of a mainstream breakthrough, released a new album, , that closed with a nearly 20-minute song, “The Diamond Sea.” Much of it is a freeform jam of slowly unfurling guitar noise. Seemingly aware of the unpalatableness of a double-digit running time largely given over to feedback, the band released a radio edit of “Diamond Sea,” a fine enough if relatively neutered four-minute version that cuts out the squall.
Its purpose was served, to a limit: The song did chart—though never higher than No. 23. Critical success abounded, but the mass market never quite caught on.
By the time the members of the Los Angeles band were born (about halfway between the release of “Diamond Sea” and Sonic Youth’s dissolution in 2011), the brief promise of a mainstream moment for difficult rock music, in the wake of ’s success, was long in the rearview. It was now the Obama years. Boom time for fans, not so much dissonance enthusiasts.
But enter Trump, and dark clouds came to pass, as did middle-school graduation; in 2019, as high schoolers, guitarist/vocalist Keyan Pourzand, bassist/vocalist Alexandria Elizabeth, and drummer Dillon Lee, formed julie. The band’s first single, “flutter,” was released in 2020, a year in which talented young devotees of experimental rock music had plenty of reason to shrink from the known world and swath themselves in oceanic swaths of reverb. julie emerged fully formed on “flutter,” .