Search - Julia Nunes :: I Wrote These

High Nunes

Sean Wagstaff | Palo Alto (Stanford), CA USA | 01/04/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Like so many people, I found Julia Nunes on Youtube. It wasn't her voice as much as her sweet, school-girl spark that hooked me. She's got a gift with the camera -- even if it's just a web cam.



With her ukelele, melodica, knee-slapping percussion, and and all-star cast of goofball roommates, she's a regular Vaudevillian road show. Even her dad makes an appearance on the piano, and I can't shake the suspicion that her mom handles all the fan mail.



Still, my expectations were low for her first two CDs (I bought them both at once). I anticipated the same kind of Youtube wackiness that makes Nunes' online presence so much fun to watch and I considered the purchase more of an acknowledgment of a promising future, than an investment in actual music.



I was pleasantly surprised however, to get a couple of bonafide mucial gems. Both CDs are more polished than her online persona, although there are a few tracks that wander away into overly-harmonized wilderness never to return. Overall, however, the clean production let me enjoy far better than Youtube her bright ukelele playing and clever-, crafty-, albeit sometimes heart-warmingly naive lyrics. "I Wrote These" is an album title gushing with sophomoric pride, but in this case it's a remarkable accomplishment and the strokes are justified. My favorite track on this disk is a little oddball, fittingly named "Odd" that perfectly captures the sweetly jarring aftermath of high-school romance.



Listening to these songs took me back to a 20-year-old kid writing poems in the stairwell for the doe-eyed girl who lived down the hall. I hope Nunes is still sparkling when I'm old and gray, which, sadly, is not so far away as that stairwell -- or that girl."

Beautiful and unexpected music

Asbestos Gustos | 02/11/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I stumbled upon Julia Nunes quite by accident and in the same way that nearly everybody else does... on YouTube. I found myself listening to dozens of songs and I wiled away hours listening to(and, of course, watching) her videos. As I listened to her music I had an experience that I haven't had since I was a teenager (that's quite a while ago); I was actually emotionally moved just by the sound of a voice.



Julia Nunes delivers a clean, simple sound on the majority of these tracks. I agree with the previous reviewer in his assessment that occasionally songs get a little off track, becoming overly harmonized or a tad too layered sounding. All of the tracks are worth listening to however and, overall, the album is an exceptionally wise investment.



If for no other reason, buy this album so that this energetic, young talent will be able to continue to produce high quality tunes.--Or better yet... buy it because her music is exceptional."

Music industry, meet your doom

William R. Russell | Hawthorne, CA United States | 08/04/2009

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Music producers must look at Julia Nunes and her college buddies singing their asses off on Youtube and see the lurking specter of unemployment. She's a talented songwriter, a competent singer with an earnest, tomboyish voice and a good-to-great ukulele player. She has faultless comedic timing, and she's as likely to use a pillow or a box as an instrument as one of her many ukes. In short, she's a musician so far away from the core music-purchasing demographic that any sane record producer would think her unmarketable.



She's produced a shockingly clever and fun set of songs that delve into some pretty intense material without pretension, and she's done it on a shoestring budget. She's not auto-tuned, her production sounds borderline amateurish and she doesn't need any promotional help. I would not be at all surprised to hear Julia Nunes' music adorning the soundtrack of the next big coming-of-age chick flick.



Welcome to the long tail, record companies. File transfer complete.



For folks that haven't made up their minds yet, she has been favorably compared to Ben Folds, and he had the good sense to do a series of concert duets with her. But if I had to compare her to others in my library, I think I would pick Jude Christodal and Jason Mraz. She has some of Jude's incisive cleverness, and some of Mr. A-Z's clear enunciation. She also reminds me of comedienne Deirdre Flint.

"