Julia Kugel has kept busy since her band The Coathangers have been on break following their last LP in 2019. After releasing her debut album as Soft Palms with her husband Scott Montoya (with whom she also co-founded the Long Beach–based music, arts, small business, and community-focused Happy Sundays Fest), she then released her solo debut as Julia, Julia in 2022, with its follow-up being announced today. Sugaring a Strawberry will be out on September 9 via her and Montoya’s own Happy Sundays Records and her longtime label of Suicide Squeeze (with whom she also recently introduced The Squeezettes), and serves as a statement of humanity in an increasingly hostile post-human world. “AI, streaming, and the digital experience of music have left me feeling a bit empty,” she explains. “I wanted to re-evaluate and reset.”
Arriving ahead of that release date is a familiarly minimal psych-folk single by the name of “A Love That Hurts,” which continues Derealization’s tradition of stripping things down to soft vocals, gentle guitar, and plenty of atmosphere. Appropriately, the lyrics themselves are fairly bare-bones in their vulnerability, while the video created by her partner is equally stark. “The song and video are stripped down, raw reflections of love, heartbreak and ultimately healing,” notes Kugel.
Check that out, and pre-order Sugaring a Strawberry here. Kugel recommends you listen to it on vinyl “with all the cracks and imperfections.”
