Julia Cumming’s solo debut Julia feels almost wilfully out of step with the current musical landscape. Drawing heavily from the warm, meticulously crafted sounds of seventies and early eighties AM radio, soft rock and yacht rock, the record embraces lush analog textures, immaculate arrangements and the kind of careful studio craftsmanship that has largely disappeared from contemporary pop music. Fortunately, nostalgia alone would not be enough to sustain a project like this. What ultimately gives the album its weight is the quality of the songwriting itself: eleven sharply constructed songs elevated further by Cumming’s distinctive voice and a real sense of melodic sophistication.
At L'Archipel, on the final night of the short tour celebrating the album’s release, Cumming and her excellent backing band manage to faithfully recreate nearly all of the record’s atmosphere on stage. The material from Julia, played in full though not in album sequence, gains an additional intimacy in this small setting, where none of the finer details in the arrangements or lyrics are swallowed by the room. Instead, the audience is able to fully appreciate the precision of the musicianship, the elegance of the harmonies and the subtle emotional shifts woven throughout the songs.
The evening also serves as a useful reminder that, although many listeners first discovered Cumming through Sunflower Bean, this solo project is far more than a side diversion. What emerges over the course of the set is an artist with a fully formed identity and a remarkably clear musical vision. If she can continue balancing this new chapter alongside the career she has already spent more than a decade building with Sunflower Bean, there is every reason to believe this project could grow into something substantial in its own right.
