It took only seconds of strumming and dreamy, dulcet singing for Dreimanis to realize he’d met his muse. He sat listening, dumfounded, dreaming up ideas for what could come to be between the two of them. Clear-headed the next day, he started his search for the stranger from the bar with whom he seemingly shared a soul. He found her; they founded July Talk.
The basic structural facts of rock band July Talk are this: two front people, Leah Fay Goldstein and Peter Dreimanis, surrounded by whiplashing guitarists Ian Docherty and [[bandmember from=2012]Josh Warburton, and double drummers Danny Miles and Dani Nash. For this compulsively DIY, rigorously self-realizing group, the essence of July Talk has always been the tension between precision and chaos.
Audiences need not ask what July Talk’s two writhing frontpeople’s relationship is to each other, but rather what their relationship is to their audience, and to the world. These bodies welcome our gaze, they revel and recoil in it while they furiously push back, asking of us what they ask of each other: please see me for who I am. If we see July Talk as a woman and a man, in opposition to one another, what we are seeing is our own projections upon these bodies.
What goes on between these bodies, all of them, that kinetic, staticky, sticky space, is where the truth of July Talk takes shape. On stage, July Talk unfurls and explodes. July Talk is known by their success at radio and their unmatched live show. Both of these things are true, but neither tells the complete story.
As video directors, their meticulous and masterful visual work has created an entirely unique aesthetic, and propelled them into collaborations with other artists, including Tanya Tagaq, Born Ruffians and Jasmyn. Their pandemic drive-in show presented an emphatic vision of creative direction, with balletic live projections opening new possibilities for coming performances. July Talk’s quieter triumphs, growing in their roles as advocates for industry change and defining their own parameters for safer, decolonized spaces at rock shows with their Love Lives Here posters, now translated into twelve languages, are as important to the band’s identity and humanity.
We can hear July Talk as the contrast of two voices that interject, operate and overlap around one another. We’re not wrong, but it’s not the full story. July Talk is a decade-long dialogue between two people; it is also a continuous conversation with older generations, previous selves, collaborators.
Even in the stark orderliness of black and white, July Talk has always been a work in progress. More accurately, it’s a work of progress, a communal pursuit of limitlessness as a mode of being. For a decade, July Talk has continued in its relentless project to know itself, through its whiskey-soaked blues rock roots on its self-titles debut EP, the 2016 dance-rock infused Touch and its contemplation of connection, or the quietly reflective eyes of their 2020 release Pray For It.
With their forthcoming 2023 album Remember Never Before, the most potently yet inventively “July Talk” album yet, the band returns – changed – to where they began.
I
July Talk Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
I try to remind myself of you
Telling lies
Felt right
Around you
Then I met a whiskey and I moved across town
I was young
High-strung
Over you
And now comes the time
That I need you the most
But I'm across town
And time will do us well
We'll survive by telling lies
We've rationed well
We'll survive by telling lies
We've rationed well
We'll survive by telling lies
We've rationed well
In July Talk's song ‘I’ve Rationed Well,’ the lyrics speak to the loneliness and sadness of a person who is separated from their former lover by distance and seemingly insurmountable emotional barriers. The song's narrator confesses to walking to the area where they lived with their ex-lover and trying to muster up memories of them. However, they admit that it's a tough challenge because they've been lying to themselves about the relationship all along. Protecting themselves from the hurt and pain of the breakup, they created a fiction that enabled them to stay together. The singer’s reliance on the lie only reinforced their dysfunctional behavior and made it harder for them to let go completely.
The singer mentions moving away from the river and the girls and the whiskey taking over, indicating that they had to run away from the painful memories of their past. The lines ‘I was young, High-strung, over you’ indicate that the relationship was intense and had a significant impact on their emotional well-being. The chorus starts with the line ‘And now comes the time that I need you the most,’ emphasizing that they still have feelings for the ex-lover, though they have lost them now.
The song's title, "I've Rationed Well," could be interpreted in a variety of ways. It could suggest that the singer has done everything in their power to keep the remnants of the relationship from being completely destroyed by their new life. Modes of self-denial, moving out of town, drinking can exacerbate the pain of a breakup, but the singer is determined to make a life without their lover. ‘We'll survive by telling lies, we've rationed well’ shows the singer’s belief that they have fixed the relationship and made it strong enough to survive solely on the lies they tell themselves.
Line by Line Meaning
As I walk to where I used to live
While I make my way to my old home
I try to remind myself of you
I aim to recall your memory
Telling lies
Fibbing
Felt right
Seemed correct
Around you
When I was with you
Then I met a whiskey and I moved across town
Soon after, I stumbled upon alcohol and relocated elsewhere
Away from the river and the girls and you
Far from the streams, the women and you
I was young
I was a juvenile
High-strung
Tense
Over you
Due to your actions or absence
And now comes the time
Presently is when
That I need you the most
I long for you greatly
But I'm across town
But I dwell at a distance
And time will do us well
And eventually we will advance
We'll survive by telling lies
We'll persevere by being dishonest
We've rationed well
We've managed the utilization of our lies suitably
We'll survive by telling lies
We'll continue to exist by sticking to our untruths
We've rationed well
We've been prudent with our falsehoods
We'll survive by telling lies
We'll make it through by deceiving
We've rationed well
We've skillfully controlled the amount of our false statements
Lyrics © OBO APRA/AMCOS
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
Nathalia Galdino
Push and pull
Darkness comes, you've gotta pay your dues
Darkness falls, wants you to over-use
You're born to live but now you live to lose
You don't wanna wait
I don't wanna wait
We're used to the night that leaves us unstable
We're used to the night we take more than we're able
We're used to the night and whatever's on the table
You don't wanna wait
I don't wanna wait
Take, take anything
I don't wanna wait
Take, take anything
You know that I'd take
Take, take anything
I don't wanna wait
I like the night (don't have to hear you when you speak)
And I like the night (somebody's got to find what you seek)
Oh, I like the night (all alone, where is it you've been?)
You don't wanna wait
I don't wanna wait
Take, take anything
I don't wanna wait
Take, take anything
You know that I'd take
Take, take anything
I'm used to the night
It's push and pull (girl on the side)
It's push and pull (and you make it through the night)
It's push and pull (I'm used to the night)
It's push and pull (but you make it through alive)
It's push and pull, push and pull
I woke up in the bloody war
You hadn't slept we went to the liquor store
And then we fought over dignity
Now see now, that was it for me. it's for me
You don't wanna wait
I don't wanna wait
Take, take anything
I don't wanna wait
Take, take anything
You know that I'd take
Take, take anything
I don't wanna wait
Take, take anything
I don't wanna wait
Take, take anything
You know that I'd take
Take, take anything
I don't wanna wait
Take, take anything
I don't wanna wait
Take, take anything
You know that I'd take
Take, take anything
I don't wanna wait
Dyl
How is this song not popular? One of my top favorite songs certainly.
Deez Nutz
Cuz it's dumb to the ear of the corn hole. But to us it's the anthem of all greatness
Magdalena Zaniewska
I love it! Have discovered it only recently…
Jordan
5 years later it has 3.3M views lol
Dizzy Wolf
I like a lot of their songs...but I guess I just don't hear whatever makes this song so good. And, I might not be the only one who feels this way.
Rhonda Doerfler
In 2016, "Texas hold em" in Canadian border jails, it played constantly until they pulled it not to win the "award". (Not in good conditions and as warfare lite.)
Stephen Novik
I just love the aggression in this song. There's such a hard edge to the arrangement-- drums, bass, the guitar, the lead male vocal, beautifully juxtaposed with the lead female vocal and the ambient sound backing her..... y'know?
Stefan Schwarze
Dumme Effekthascherei
Kul3girl
Two very opposite sounding voices that go very well together
Lou
Totally