Review: JuJu ‘Apocalypse Is God’s Spoiler’
After the release of his 2021 fourth album La Que Sabe under the moniker of JuJu, Palermo, Sicily’s most honourable and well-known singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist of international fame Gioele Valenti is back three years later with his fifth album, Apocalypse Is God’s Spoiler, where once more he brings out his most imaginative and intriguing ways to captivate the heart and soul of his well solid cult following.
Having a conversation with Valenti is like reading a book of enchanting tales where each and every part of the story told has a mesmerising and overwhelming ending. You could think of him as a songwriter with a split personality, juggling his songwriting with his other alter ego, Herself, from which he distanced himself from a more lively soul that we find in JuJu.
Musically both projects have their own body of work and to dive in and write for these two projects is like embarking on two mindful different journeys. Tracing the musical career of Valenti as JuJu is like furtively browsing the pages of his diary that he keeps well-guarded and open only to a few intimates. Musically, it is an invitation to enter into a jungle of sounds where every genre is absorbed and delivered in its own way with passion and awareness. A veritable feast of sounds that have been part of his life since the first moments he fell in love with music.
He fuses post-punk with psych rock and some genres that are not easy to pin down. But when you enter the realm of tribal music and the world funk on 2017s Our Mother Was A Plant, you realise how his music-making transcends all boundaries. That album is a monumental vehicle of spiritual expression with how he sees the world, and the collaboration with Goat’s Capra Informis brings an extra bit of ritualistic psych magic.
eight songs of pure musical euphoria…
Valenti is a restless soul, always searching to explore his musical instinct and sometimes with the help of guest musicians he chooses to collaborate with. La Que Sabe is a sweet affair. An album quasi-made to dance to and enjoy its pulsating sound, whether funky or pop music with some reminiscence of Arcade Fire, and you can’t blame him for it.
And so, after three years the man returns with a new album as JuJu with Apocalypse Is God’s Spoiler involving us once again into his world of rhythms that invite you to contort your body in an endless mantra. Here his music transports your soul into a tunnel of trance, leaving you in senseless confusion as you let yourself be carried away on his river of music that penetrates so deep that you feel a sensation of joy.
Apocalypse… is Valenti‘s great oak tree whose branches bring comfort to his incessant wanderings across its eight songs of pure musical euphoria which, as the title of the third track states, Bring U Smile and sweep away your sadness. Explaining the content of each song throws my mind into a frenzy of happy and sad feelings. When listening to the sounds that come out of this new album is rather indescribable, like being feverish and overwhelmed by his outburst on Black And White and the celestial experimental instrumental that is Saint Vs Traitor.
The album features a collaboration with his good friend, and Julie’s Haircut guitarist, Luca Giovanardi in Doomed Love and to my great amazement, partly because I had lost track of him after his exit from Nirvana, drummer Chad Channing who helps close the album with Clear, which, oddly enough, clearly summarises all the musical content of the album. JuJu is a good demon who, through his otherworldly dances, brings out the goodness that hides in each and every one of us.
Label: Sister 9 Recordings
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Scribed by: Domenico ‘Mimmo’ Caccamo
