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.
Now I Know
July Talk Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
As the sun turned back on
A stranger's body
That I knew all along
We can move slowly
Nothing unholy
Shed the skin we've been living in
We can be new again
Keep, keep it between us
Stay with me until the sun comes up
Now I know how it feels to fall in love
And I know it feels like falling apart
Never wanted something more
It's not enough, not enough
Got to get that real love
The sunrise
Is inevitable
Door's closed
Need I say more
Cut out all the people talking
This is for me and you
This is for me and you
This is for me and you
Never wanted something more
This is for me and you
Now I know how it feels to fall in love
And I know it feels like falling apart
Never wanted something more
It's not enough, not enough
Got to get that real love
Got to get that real love
Oh, when the darkness comes
(Keep, keep it between us)
We're standing naked
(Keep, keep it between us)
We're not mistaken
(Keep, keep it between us)
It was worth waiting
(Keep, keep it between us)
Now I know
Got to get that real love
Now I know how it feels to fall in love
And I know it feels like falling apart
Never wanted something more
It's not enough, not enough
Got to get that real love
How it feels to fall in love
And I know it feels like falling apart
Everybody living is dying for love
It's not enough, not enough
Got to get that real love
It's not enough, not enough
It's not enough, not enough
It's not enough, not enough
Got to get that real love
The song "Now I Know" by July Talk tells a story of two strangers who fell in love at first sight. The first verse describes the moment when the singer sees the stranger's body in the sunrise and feels a déjà vu sensation of knowing them all along. They decide to start a new life together, shedding the skin of their past selves and moving slowly forward. The chorus expresses the singer's realization of how it feels to fall in love and that it's not enough to settle for anything less than real love.
The second verse sets the scene of a closed door that separates the two lovers from the rest of the world. The singer wants to cut out all the gossip noise and keep their love private, just for themselves. The bridge describes how standing naked in the darkness is worth it when they have each other, and the final chorus holds a universal truth that everyone is dying for love.
The song's overall message is that love is a powerful force that can make us feel vulnerable, but it's worth risking everything for the chance of real love. The lyrics are poetic and metaphorical, connoting that the lovers might have a tumultuous journey, but they will choose to confront it together.
Line by Line Meaning
The first thing I saw
As the sun turned back on
A stranger's body
That I knew all along
As the sun rose, I saw a familiar stranger's body that I recognized despite not having met them before.
We can move slowly
Nothing unholy
Shed the skin we've been living in
We can be new again
We have the ability to take things slowly and start over, leaving behind past behaviors and habits to become new people without any malicious intent.
Keep, keep it between us
Stay with me until the sun comes up
Let's keep our relationship a secret and spend the night together until sunrise.
Now I know how it feels to fall in love
And I know it feels like falling apart
Never wanted something more
It's not enough, not enough
Got to get that real love
I finally understand what it's like to be in love, but it hurts just as much as it feels good. I know I want more, but what I have isn't enough. I need to find true, real love.
The sunrise
Is inevitable
Door's closed
Need I say more
Cut out all the people talking
This is for me and you
Morning is coming regardless, and there's no denying that we're together now. We need to ignore all the naysayers and focus on us.
Oh, when the darkness comes
(Keep, keep it between us)
We're standing naked
(Keep, keep it between us)
We're not mistaken
(Keep, keep it between us)
It was worth waiting
(Keep, keep it between us)
When we're in the dark, let's stick together and keep our relationship private. We're both vulnerable and exposed, but we know we made the right decision in waiting for each other.
Now I know
Got to get that real love
Now that I've experienced what love feels like, I know I need to find true, genuine love.
How it feels to fall in love
And I know it feels like falling apart
Everybody living is dying for love
It's not enough, not enough
Got to get that real love
The feeling of falling in love is both beautiful and painful. We're all searching for love, but it takes more than what we have now. We need to find the real thing.
It's not enough, not enough
It's not enough, not enough
It's not enough, not enough
Got to get that real love
What we have now isn't enough. We need more, something real and genuine.
Lyrics © Peermusic Publishing
Written by: Peter Dreimanis, Danny Miles, Ian Docherty, Josh Warburton, Leah Fay
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
Julian Schmidt
on Push + Pull
This is my first song I really caught on to balance because until I got here I already had thoughts but then push and pull drove it home we always do opposite things and as the lyric goes I don't want to wait and I take to much that is just saying so if we split day and night and you like the night all night you take but all day you would have to give back to even it out but when would you sleep? And you don't want to wait either so your scale shifts to causing more harm than you can balance. Nightlife and drugs and booze is just how they explain it because they and well I relate to this concept
Julian Schmidt
on Paper Girl
Well super complicated as usual love them for the music but this is my interpretation he's saying that he realizes he's an extreme person and also that he uses women by lying and hurting them by abuse not physical but abuse is abuse hence the chorus. Now she sings the chorus solo first time more as a warning and info to women cuz if you notice his next line is oh it must be hard to be a pretty girl is dipped in sarcasm. Then ya it's hard to be a girl in society to constantly require good looks and ageing is inevitable. In 3 lines he reflects upon his usury of female insecurity to how it's society that's really damaging women and really like it or not you can't blame males for being like that because it just is the way now that males have an easier time being abusive. I could go more in depth as to society but I digress only thing I want to point out that he's not saying it's not his fault in fact he's being sarcastic to serious so fast to show that's just what it is because blaming humanity is the reality but c'mon that's still why people do blame things we can't affect to not take responsibility so he isn't sorry he's trying to teach that he realized it and is saying by keep away from me that he is bad but doesn't want to be. I'll not make this too much longer but the correlation to money and secrets in your morning drink is that it comforts you in a small dose and you actually want secrets as a addiction just really you moderate it and then it would benefit your desire for those things. However like I mentioned earlier he is an extreme person so if you can't handle his dose of secrets and money which is just a metaphor for potential as money allows us to get things for wrong or right. Her singing along at certain times and solo at times makes sense of you think of the song as it is all about him and she is there to support the lessons involved, and less deeply she's got a great voice plus they always sing together so when you create a song that's using abuse from the male side, well then it being a punk song and her not coming off hurt and whiny I ask you how would you compose it? Love every song by July talks though they all mean alot, if youve read this to the end I'll add one thought all their music leads back to how balance is what the world needs and humans can't do it so we achieve balance by hurting and helping, working hard then being lazy etc. We can't balance all the time so we balance by doing more of one than making up for it. That's you can figure out why human race is destroying the planet because gluttony and luxury are too hard for us to balance out with sacrifice and hardship. If humans were neutral be only way but we are to intelligent and we'd get bored, once survival wasn't important every second of every day that was the beginning of the end
Cheers, Jules Schmidt