Julie's Haircut

by William Ruhlmann
The Italian rock band Julie's Haircut was formed in the late 1990s in Sassuolo, a small town near Modena, Italy, and consists of guitarist/singer Nicola Caleffi, guitarist/singer Luca Giovanardi, drummer Robbi Morselli, bassist/singer Laura Storchi, and keyboardist Reverend Fabio Vecchi. Among its influences, the band has cited 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, and it is significant that the list exclusively contains American and British performers. Julie's Haircut's vocalists sing in English, and the band's affection for Anglo-American rock groups gives it a sound familiar to U.S. and U.K. rock fans.
Julie's Haircut began releasing records on the Gammapop label in 1999, with its debut album, Fever in the Funkhouse, appearing in September. The Plague of Alternative Rock EP, released on Superlove, followed in May 2000, and in 2001 came the album Stars Never Looked So Bright (on Gammapop) and The Black Christmas EP (on Superlove). Following the demise of Gammapop, Julie's Haircut contracted to Homesleep Records for its next EP, The Power of Psychic Revenge, released in May 2003. Their third album (and first U.S. release, through Darla) was Adult Situations, in October 2003. Another EP, Marmalade, came out in March 2004. In its first few years of existence, Julie's Haircut restricted its appearances to Italy as its members maintained day jobs, even while opening for such international acts as the Hives and Billy Corgan's Zwan. But the group's growing international renown led to offers to perform internationally, and by 2003 it had performed in Eastern Europe and been invited to appear in the U.S.