Music Review: Juniper, ‘She Steals Candy’
The retro-pop sophomore album from a high school senior (and her dad) is a sugary delight and a music geek’s dream.
Juniper’s She Steals Candy album artwork.
When my kids were pre-tweens, I was living the dream. They soaked up and shared my musical interests with me—one of them would sing Colter Wall with me while I played guitar; the other got super into The Cactus Blossoms, attending all-ages shows with me and learning the words to every song. Alas, it was short-lived; each developed their own very cool but distinctly non-country music preferences. We still find cultural common ground elsewhere, but neither shows any indication of returning to Americana anytime soon.
So you’ll forgive me if some sour grapes creep into this review of a collaboration between a DJ/singer-songwriter/musician father and his kid. Michael Shelley and his teenage daughter Juniper seem to have bonded over music her whole life, enough so that she’s got an impeccably deep-cut music taste and just released her second album in collaboration with him.
Juniper. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Of course, it probably doesn’t hurt that her dad can call on musicians from around the world to write for and make guest appearances on their albums, including members of Yo La Tengo, NRBQ, Belle and Sebastian and, yes, even The Cactus Blossoms! (Page Burkum provides harmonies on one song.)
With 16 tracks—all but one coming in under 3 minutes and a few that are less than 2 minutes long—She Steals Candy is mainly comprised of covers, with two originals by Shelley and at least one written for Juniper by other artists. (This is a departure from her self-titled debut album, for which she wrote or co-wrote eight of the 12 tracks.) On this new record, the song selection is as eclectic as the range of guest musicians and includes tunes originally played by The Bangles, KISS, The Sails, The Go-Gos and more.
Even though many acts Juniper covers here are well-known, the chosen tracks are not their well-known/overplayed hits, so many of them sound like originals to me. The most-covered songwriter is “godfather of Americana” Delbert McClinton, with four of his songs featured. (Is it a coincidence that McClinton himself also just released a 16-track guest-star-studded album of mostly covers last year? I really couldn’t tell you!)
If this wild backstory makes you think this improbable album must be just a novelty or a vanity project, think again. The wildest thing of all about it is that it really works. Juniper (with a lot of help from her friends) has crafted an irresistible compilation of retro-pop songs that coalesce around themes of teen love, angst and heartache.
Despite the revolving cast of musicians and sounds, there’s a remarkable cohesion here, and that’s down to Juniper’s vocals. Youthful but preternaturally self-assured, showing flashes of emotion but generally cool and controlled, her voice is singular but also calls to mind, in various moments, Lesley Gore, Avril Lavigne, Jill Sobule, Skeeter Davis, and others. She fits beautifully into a genre- and time-spanning pantheon of women singers.
Juniper. Photo courtesy of the artist.
The album’s sound also harkens to numerous eras and styles, from 60s bubblegum (“Little Miss Stuck Up”) to lounge (“See You Tonight”) to countrypolitan (“If You Really Want Me to I’ll Go”) to 90s power-pop (“I’ve Gotta Boy”), and more. At the same time, none of the covers are faithful recreations of the originals; they’re more like reinventions. A feeling of playfulness pervades; the melange of songwriters and musicians and styles is expertly rendered into a sweet-tart concoction that feels light but never shallow.
If there’s a music equivalent to a mixologist, that’s what Michael Shelley is, and this album is like a flight of artisan cocktails that shouldn’t taste so harmonious on the tongue but somehow manage to delight and intoxicate you in unexpected ways. And the secret ingredient lending every one of them a touch of magic? Juniper.
Carol Roth. Photo credit: Dan Lee.
Carol Roth is a full-time marketing copywriter and the primary music journalist and social media publicist for Adventures in Americana. In addition to studying the guitar and songwriting, Carol’s additional creative side hustle is writing self-proclaimed “trashy” novels under the pseudonym T.A. Berkeley!
