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Juniper
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Quantity in Basket:
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Price: $12.00
Artist:
Juniper
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Fifteen-year-old
Juniper Shelley has been singing for as long as she (or anyone) can remember.
She grew up in a deeply musical home, absorbing the sounds around her and
basking in the eclectic tastes of her dad, seasoned singer-songwriter and
longtime WFMU DJ Michael Shelley. The 12
new songs that comprise her uncluttered charmer of a debut album reflect the
young artist's expansive musical sensibility, while also embodying the
interests of a normal teenaged girl in 2020. The material ranges from lavish widescreen pop
extravaganzas to understated live-in-the–studio performances, echoing the
spirit of vintage pop as well as Juniper's wholly contemporary musical
sensibility. Throughout the album, she flavors her effortlessly accessible
songs with inventive touches of vintage keyboards, electric sitar, Latin
percussion, harp and vibraphone. "I guess that my musical taste is a
mashup of my family's music and my friends' music," she says. "I
really like the Beach Boys, the Zombies and Fountains of Wayne, but I also love
Taylor Swift." To bring her album's
distinctive musical vision to life, Juniper and her father, who served as
producer, were joined by an all-star cast of pop luminaries, including
guitarists Marshall Crenshaw, Ira Kaplan (Yo La Tengo), Mark Spencer (Son Volt)
and Greg Townson (Los Straitjackets), keyboardists Chris Geddes (Belle and
Sebastian) and Jay Gonzalez (Drive-By Truckers), and drummers Steve Goulding
(Mekons) and Dennis Diken (the Smithereens). Lending their voices to the album
are Fountains of Wayne frontman Chris Collingwood and the vocal trio of April
March, Megan Reilly and Rebecca Turner, all solo artists in their own right. While many of the album's songs were written
or co-written by Juniper and her dad, they also invited some talented friends
to contribute material to the project, receiving some notable submissions, including
"Best Kept Secret" by Tommy Dunbar of the Rubinoos and Kyle Vincent,
the swaggering "Punk Rock Boy" by Francis Macdonald of Teenage
Fanclub, and the witty "Poke Your Eye Out," co-written, specifically
for Juniper, by late Muffs frontwoman Kim Shattuck and Cub's Lisa Marr. Other highlights include the glammy bubblegum
anthem "Everybody's Got A Crush On Chad," the raucous rocker
"Kids On My Corner,” the bittersweet ballad "I Don't Want to Dream
About You" and the dreamy, wistful "Girls Just Want A Boy To Rest
Their Head Upon." The pop apple
didn’t fall far from the pop tree as we like to say! Imagine if Belinda Carlisle or Susannah Hoffs
made their debuts at 15! You’re off to a
flying start Juniper! EXCELLENT!!
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