Bluejuice

No-one wants to be alone, but company is a complicated idea. Whether you're talking about romanc, social or professional life, somemes you've got to work together to get things done. On their third album, bluejuice were driven to exceed expectaons. Working with the best session players and
co-writers in Australia, the five piece group expanded the instrument list and put everything on the line in order to produce the energec, modern pop record they’ve always threatened to make, but never previously delivered. Until now.

New album “Company” sees the band trawl any and every avenue for inspiraon, from classic hits radio like Phil Collins, Thin Lizzy, Steely Dan, The Style Council, Eurythmics, Steve Winwood and Billy Joel; to RnB and dance, from Boyz II Men, Mark Morrison and Cameo; 90's house acts like E.M.F.; 60's Stax and Motown, and inspiring modern pop and rock like Spoon, The Strokes, Phoenix, Lile Dragon and LCD Soundsystem.

The effect is an album that is steeped in love for the genres and tradions of pop music, ulising studio tricks and techniques to embellish the energy that the band is known for. Jake Stone and Stavros Yiannoukas trade lead vocals, matching and harmonising their opposing vocal tones. Musical director Jeremy Craib brings his innate mul-instrumental facility to a variety of songs built around a strong
foundaon of piano and keyboards, while bassist Jamie Cibej and drummer James Hauptmann introduce electronics, drum replacement and other new toys to help movate the dancefloor and beat back-beat boredom. Someme between their ARIA-nominated previous release “Head Of the Hawk” and this one, bluejuice needed to grow. That doesn't mean dropping the sense of humour that keeps the members together, but learning to record at a higher level was a necessity - bluejuice had to become a studio band as well as a live proposion.

“We realised that we’ve never made a great album, from start to finish,” says Stav. “Increasingly we're a pop band and wanted to make ‘Company’ as big as possible; it was all about serving the songs, whether it needed horns, session musicians or girls‘ voices – we didn’t want to limit ourselves, so we built a community up around it.”

Jake spent a wonderful couple of days wring with Alex Burne from Sparkadia. 'Act Yr Age' and 'Shock' came out of that period. “Alex Burne is a great friend, and a songwring/producon weapon. We had a great couple of days hanging out at his parents' house playing the piano and just talking music. I was increasingly feeling old, so ‘Act Yr Age’ seemed a logical joke, while ‘Shock’ happened while I was having a cold shower and thinking of Phil Collins,” says Stone of the collaboration.

Stone also fulfilled a personal dream by wring a song with The Presets' singer/songwriter Julian Hamilton; the Steve Winwood-inspired ‘On My Own’. “It was a really inmidang inially, but Julian made the whole thing easy. We talked about Joe Jackson and Steve Winwood, and how big, senmental synth-ballads could be awesomely cheesy and incredibly sincere at the same me. We wanted to write a classic radio song; a ballad that didn't shy away from expansive emoons.”

Alex Burne and Julian Hamilton helped the band shape the songwring before instrumentalists like Thomas Rawle (Papa Vs Pretty), jazz guitarists Ben Hauptmann and Aaron Flower, and vocalists Elana Stone, Zoe Hauptmann and Yael
Stone fleshed out “Company's” orchestral feel.
On ‘Shock’ and ‘Act Yr Age’ UK producer Blue May worked with Alex Burne to give the songs a big, European pop
sensibility, while producer-in-chief Eric J. Dubowsky (Weezer, Art Vs Science) took the controls with assistant JP Fung (Last Dinosaurs, Lile Red). Company was mixed in the UK by Grammy winning engineer Adrian Bushby (Foo Fighters, New Order, My Bloody Valenne).

“Company” depicts the struggles and humanity of everyday life, the shock of break-ups, the way personality resists change, and gap between reality and our romanc, social and professional aspiraons. In short, the highs and lows of human interaction.

While bluejuice are often portrayed as pranksters, there’s a depth to their intelligence, drive and musicianship that doesn’t always shine in the light of, say, the skipping team video of previous gold single ‘Broken Leg’, or the man pash that shocked Mel and Koshie on Sunrise. To say bluejuice are a dichotomy would be an understatement.

Take opener ‘Can’t Keep Up’, a green eyed monster of a song about Jake's jealousy of contemporaries and previour tour mates The Jezabels. “Jake always has a band muse in one form or other,” says Stav, “a band he’s jealous of. [Usually] bands that he loves and talks posively about – there’s also a side where he’s jealous of their ability to be easily successful.”

In fact, jealousy powers “Company”. You can hear the mof repeated in ‘Dressed For Success’ and ‘Aspen, New York’, where friends go on to do great things while our protagonist ponders his existence alongside the schoolgirls and yummy mummies of that most un-rock’n’roll of Sydney suburbs, Balmain. Then there’s ‘You Haven’t Changed’, a song about “a girl I was obsessed with for five years,” according to Jake. “When we stopped being friends I kept wring about her anyway. She’d broken up with someone and I wanted to say, ‘Ha ha, you’re not that great’ – really sour grapes – and then I realised the song was about me.' A bluejuice record wouldn’t be complete without some wincingly appraising relaonship talk. Whether it be ‘I’ll Put You On’, about a palm reader in New York, and Jake's fascinaon with sex magick; ‘Kinda Evil’, which relates Stav’s jealousy as he was DJ-ing one day and watching his girl play up on the dance floor; or ‘Cheap Trix’, the Cameo-meets-Scissor
Sisters burn-up in which female protagonists assess the liars in their lives.

Stav’s diet of “daggy” ’90s R&B and Jake’s cheesy pop ethic makes this an album designed for dancing, from brass-infused number ‘The Recession’ (“our disco ode to the global financial crisis”) to more thoughul and expansive closer ‘On My Own’.

These sonic mood swings are what make bluejuice so compelling; a fundamental lack of control that defines one of Australia’s most energec and emoonally unpredictable bands. Aer ten years of music, bluejuice are a dysfunctional family to whom music is basically group therapy.

It's no wonder that they chose to call their third album “Company”