Track listing: Lipstick and Furs

When I write a review of a release from an artist I haven't had the joy of discovering on my own, I always just listen to the music before doing any research. That comes later.

As soon as "Lipstick and Furs" by Flowers for Juno started playing it immediately put a smile on my face and simultaneously made me want to start dancing around while also bringing back so many memories of when I first discovered post punk, new wave, goth as well as glam music. All of these genres can be heard as influential styles here. This song could just as easily have been released in the late 70s through mid 80s.

Beneath the surface, however, there are a lot of things that make this song, and Flowers for Juno unique and new.
The lyrics are not all full of gloom and angst. This song is about longing, yes, but a longing for specific and varied archetypal and superficial examples of women.

For example Benjó James sings "I want a girl in lipstick and furs / Slavic accent and a designer purse." He also sings of wanting "A girl with fake tan and hoops / shows off her thong every time that she stoops" and "a girl in Oriental dress / Bejeweled and bedecked like a Turkish Princess."

Clearly the women he is fantasizing about are quite different. He also repeats that "You're so far away from me / a fantasy" and as the song is winding down he begins repeating that he "wants a girl in lipstick and furs," but simply ends with "I want a girl."

There are elements of loneliness and feeling that what he wants is too far out of his grasp, but as Benjó himself has told Coyote Music in Wiley Koepp's interview that he has "no interest in writing lyrics about angst or how alienated [he] feels," and wonders "why can't we all sing about fun things like whisky and women?"

Cheers to that! There are times in one's life that reality is so heavy that listening to sad songs can make it worse or result in floods of tears. After years of listening to The Cure (excepting their few happy, poppy songs), Joy Division and Echo and the Bunnymen, I experienced a different kind of enjoyment with this song. Some of the musical elements are similar but the lyrics are more fun, placing Flowers for Juno in a class of their own. At one point one of the guitar riffs almost reminds me of a fuzzier version of the one in David Bowie's "Heroes."

Hailing from Newcastle upon Tyne, at this point Benjó James pretty much IS Flowers for Juno. He is a self taught multi instrumentalist and vocalist, while also writing and producing his own recordings. James plays many instruments - even electric sitar and mellotron. He does occasionally work with other artists, but James is the main show - and a very good one at that.

I'm quite happy to add Flowers for Juno to my listening rotation and to dig deeper into past releases.