Cherisher [Colored Vinyl], Julies, Vinyl

If The Julies' last-and first ever-full-length announced a comeback, it's follow-up takes the opportunity to look back. With their new album Cherisher, The Julies lean fully into reflection, memory, and meaning, delivering a deeply personal collection about holding on, on purpose. It's title functions as a tiny manifesto: an embrace of core truths and long-held passions, and of personal nostalgia without irony or apology."I felt in constant threat of succumbing to the whirlpool of the socio-political intensities of the times," says singer Chris Newkirk. "To avoid being swallowed whole, I grabbed hold of the DNA-shaped truths of personal identity that took root and codified themselves in my youth.""And the sonic canvases Alex (Yost) and Patrick (Zbyszewski) were creating became an immersive counterpoint to all that shock and awe," he adds. That said, Cherisher is far from disengaged. Between it's many moments of introspective nostalgia are some declarations of awareness and quiet resistance.Recorded and produced by the band themselves, Cherisher moves fluidly between intimacy and release, with pensive verses giving way to choruses designed with communal energy in mind. The album draws from shimmering post-punk urgency and '90s shoegaze-influenced walls of sound, allowing Alex and Pat, both playing multi-instrumentalist these days, a chance to repurpose the past as well. "We focused on crafting an 'album' and for me that started with finding the right sounds and tones," says Alex. "I was hoping to make something with more grit and edge while retaining our signature dreaminess."Because it was such an insular project, the band felt it was paramount to widen the aperture to outside influence. Mixed and mastered in London by James Aparicio (Depeche Mode, Spiritualized, Mogwai), Cherisher gained the depth, atmosphere and, of course, shimmer, that Alex envisioned. The album subtly expands The Julies' palette as well. "Teenage Sadness" features the first female vocal ever heard on a Julies track, with Olivia Buchholz of synth-pop duo Memory Stitches lending a dreamy sweetness to the chorus.As a band with the inescapable footnote of allowing 25+ years between releases, The Julies are ever determined to operate more in evolution mode than reunion mode. Cherisher is not about reliving the past but conversing with it; it's a record that treats memory as momentum.