Julie Meunier – Lines on My Palm

Last month we wrote about ‘I Don’t Want to Be Friends‘, a single by Julie Meunier. A “one-sided conversation which arose from the lockdown-era of the pandemic,” as we described it, “where the desire for human connection was balanced against a fear of romance or intimacy.” The track was the first from the artist’s new EP, Lines on My Palm, and this ambivalent picture of love and loneliness carries through the entire release.

Take the title track opener with its acoustic strum and intimate textures, a plea as voiced in an empty room, or the placid bittersweet croon ‘Fool’s Paradise’. Songs linked in the way they pine for a slightly different version of reality, where all feelings can be acted upon and satisfied. With Dwi Riana and Jack Rudy adding guitar and bass, and Juan Andres Jimenez producing, mixing and mastering the release, the EP brings this emotion to life with a sound often hushed but with fervent crescendos, as Julie Meunier tries to communicate something beyond words.

‘Headrush’ is perhaps the best example on the release. The song’s tenderness is counterbalanced by a needling frustration, as though Meunier is coming to see the gap between wishes and reality, and the sound stews within this ambiguous mood before rising into a series of closing crescendos. “This is a song about wanting desperately to connect to someone knowing they simply aren’t where you are in the relationship,” Meunier explains. “It’s the craving of the mundane and simple things you can romantically share with someone, knowing you’ll never have that with them.”

Lines On My Palm is out now and available from the usual places.