Julie's Haircut

Originating during the closing years of the 1990s in the modest Italian town of Sassuolo near Modena, the rock group Julie's Haircut features guitarist/singer Nicola Caleffi, guitarist/singer Luca Giovanardi, drummer Robbi Morselli, bassist/singer Laura Storchi, and keyboardist Reverend Fabio Vecchi. The musicians have named the Velvet Underground, the Pixies, Sonic Youth, Pavement, Spacemen 3, the Flaming Lips, My Bloody Valentine, Dinosaur Jr., the Beatles, Pink Floyd, the Rolling Stones, the Stooges, and Black Sabbath among their reference points, every one of them an American or British act. Because the vocalists deliver their lines in English and the collective draws so deeply from Anglo-American rock traditions, the resulting style registers as immediately recognizable to listeners in the United States and the United Kingdom.

Julie's Haircut issued its first recordings on the Gammapop imprint beginning in 1999, when the debut long-player Fever in the Funkhouse appeared that September. The Plague of Alternative Rock EP followed on Superlove in May 2000, while 2001 brought both Stars Never Looked So Bright on Gammapop and The Black Christmas EP on Superlove. After Gammapop folded, the band moved to Homesleep Records for the May 2003 EP The Power of Psychic Revenge. Its third album, Adult Situations, arrived in October 2003 and marked the group's initial American release via Darla. The Marmalade EP surfaced the following March. In its earliest period the ensemble confined its shows to Italy, where members held regular employment even as they supported international visitors such as the Hives and Billy Corgan's Zwan. Growing overseas interest soon produced bookings farther afield; by 2003 the group had already appeared in Eastern Europe and received an invitation to the United States. The fourth album, 2006's After Dark My Sweet, found the musicians exploring broader experimental textures in collaboration with Spacemen 3's Sonic Boom. That same year they shared a stage with former Can frontman Damo Suzuki. Three years afterward came the double-album Our Secret Ceremony, succeeded in 2013 by the instrumental set Ashram Equinox. The longest interval between projects ended when Invocation and Ritual Dance of My Demon Twin appeared in 2017.