.png)
Images credit: Neelam Khan Vela unless stated otherwise
Coming off their recent UK tour with internationally acclaimed, 4 million Spotify monthly listeners US band ‘The Backseat Lovers’, junodream fans are highly anticipating the band’s upcoming release of their debut album coming, and quote "very very soon". In the lead up to this and after seeing them steal the show supporting Backseat Lovers in Bristol, we were fortunate enough to sit down with junodream’s lead guitarist Tom Rea (far left) for this week’s edition of New Music Friday.
Blending a mix of angst, alt and dream rock, junodream have already established their own fascinating niche in the indie space. However, before the clean retro-future aesthetic and the polished ambience encapsulated in their most recent EP ‘Travel Guide’, what was junodream?
Starting off as a simple school band of five mates all playing together, the boys found a relatively high degree of success, even getting offered management and production deals. However this band was not to become junodream as we know it; even though the cast list is the same, the boys ended up binning the first iteration school band and took a break for a couple years.
Tom said that “although it was great fun, we felt that we needed to grow up, listen to more music and more albums [as] we were writing about anything and everything with no real direction”.
This defacto musical education the boys embarked upon did not tire their bond, as even when they were bandless they still played and practiced together regularly. But the difference it made, between their old band and junodream, is to give the boys a renewed focus of direction of what they want to make and why they want to make it.
Like any honest band member, Tom admitted that the reason they first formed a band, aside from playing the actual music, is the lifestyle the music industry sells to us.
“the girlfriends, the boyfriends, the money and the people saying “look at that f*cking legend over there” - is everything that being in a band is sold as to you”.
Image credit: Barney Curran
However with junodream, it is less about that and more about making things they are proud of and genuinely want to create. Tom says that it feels “more credible and legitimate” as they no longer pile pressure on themselves to achieve the rockstar lifestyle or to have traditional forms of ‘success’. Nevertheless, they don't rest on their laurels and “as long as things carry on moving forward, we’re happy”. Even though they have dreams of playing Glastonbury, Jools Holland and touring America, as most bands do: junodream drills down to the essence of what making music is all about - making genuine songs that sound great.
But what makes them junodream who they are today? Well, the band do take inspirations from some notable sources such as Pink Floyd, Tame Impala and Easy Life, but ultimately their inspirations are too numerous to really count as any sort of forgery. The stem that junodream branches off is not imitation and rather is the name and the logo of the band itself.
Originally representing the five founding members and each of their personalities, although that idea was scrapped, the logo became fundamental to the design of everything that were to become junodream. Similar in elements to the famous junosynth keyboard, old atari aesthetics or even the 1975’s “A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships” (as seen on the website homepage especially), the junodream aesthetic per se takes you back into a 20th century scifi dreamworld, and that’s not even to mention their dream rock melodies.
Although the boys have previously said that the name ‘junodream’ itself means “f*ck all” in their interview with Xray Magazine; there is nevertheless a blueprint for makes something ‘junodream’ clearly laid out in their body of work so far. In the X-Ray interview, similar to what Tom told me in our interview, the band said how in their music they “want to bring the inane everyday moments to life; the feelings just under the skin you don't pay attention to”.
Instead of writing about things like your first crush or hating the establishment, the music is all very relatable, that feeling of being addicted to your phone, feeling like nobody wants you or wallowing in your comfort zone. However, it's easy to feel like this is all getting very complex, so I asked Tom straightforwardly, if you were to sum up your music in three words, what words would you choose. At first joked that people could call their music “shit dad rock”, but for the actual three words he said this:
“dream, insignificance, wonder”
For their upcoming album, they aim to bring these elements to new heights not ever seen before. From their live shows to their vinyls and their cover art, as we speak each element is being carefully crafted to bring these three core elements, the five polaroid-like colours and the junodream name into a new, all encompassing dream to encounter. Although they are very tight-lipped about the album’s name, release date and concept, Tom made sure to rest assure that this new album will be worth the wait (and will come ‘very very soon’). Expect a complete junoworld to be created. For the live shows, not only to be a band performing outwards to a crowd, but to be a totally immersive experience. New merchandise, visuals and of course, music, are all coming our way.
In the past they have already created some absolutely unique pieces of merchandise, from handmade matchboxes to a dinosaur embroidered rucksack for ‘Travel Guide’, which were both part of giveaways. Live show wise, apart from being outstanding supports for the UK leg of the Backseat Lovers’ international tour, they played ‘Travel Guide’ to a live cinema audience whilst the music videos played on the big screen.
And finally, music wise? Well it speaks for itself, junodream have already dared to dream and have gone to the moon; so why not join them for their new album and support them in their mission to Mars?
If you dare to dream, check out junodream on Spotify, Instagram and... soon at a live show near you.
Comments