Right from the start, julie’s wall of sound aesthetic was a smokescreen; something to shroud the rock trio’s self-doubt and emotional turmoil from prying eyes. “flutter,” julie’s debut single released in 2020, sprints through gothic melodrama and brooding teenage angst. “I’m draped in lead and heavy as a slug / Drag the body under the rug,” guitarist Pourzand sings through clanging riffs and a thicket of noise that sounds like a helicopter taking flight. The song, released just a month into the pandemic, caught a wave and has been streamed over 30 million times, far surpassing the band’s expectations.
“flutter” was only ever intended to be a flare in the night sky, something the band threw up to see who was paying attention. Its massive success left the band in a quandary. Pourzand and Elizabeth had both enrolled at the Southern California Institute for Architecture with Lee joining them in the move to Los Angeles. When the band first started, julie would travel from Orange County to L.A., watching local bands Momma and Cryogeyser and shopping at Amoeba Records. They assumed the move would be a slipstream into sharing stages and filling those shelves with their own music, but soon realized that studying to be architects and being in a band don’t mix.
“For a long time, maybe a year and a half, we felt like we could do both,” Pourzand says. “Like, ‘This is fine. I just need to stay up longer and drink more coffee and have more energy drinks and we can make it happen.’” In December of 2022, wired from a mixture of caffeine and an Atlantic Records deal that makes Turnstile and 100 gecs label mates, Pourzand and Elizabeth attended their final classes before dropping out.