Djunah - Femina Furens

A lot of our understandings of decades or generations are deeply filtered through media. So how we represent and remember the 1980s, for example, is as much about how the 80s looked via Blade Runner as it is about actual representations of that decade. The 80s was ringer t-shirts, acid washed jeans, and moppy hair as much as it was synths and neon, and yet those sounds and images have become indelibly imprinted on our understanding of that time period because of the media we associate with the 80s. 

I'm actually old enough to remember the 1990s. As such, I’m fully authorized to say that Djunah is a band that fully captures what I remember as being exciting about that time of period of music more than almost any current band. 

Let me explain. 

Djunah are a sludgy, two-piece post-metal band from Chicago whose new album, Femina Furens, is an early contender for my favorite album of the year. The songs are a mixture of fist pumping, driving, anthemic rock (Seven Winds of Sekhmet and Petting both really stand out in this regard) and arty, avant-garde noise, seamlessly combining these two disparate impulses. This duality applies to their lyrics, as well. Singer Donna Diane seems equally at home bellowing sing-along choruses as she does whispering or screaming harrowingly confessional, stream-of-consciousness prose. 

This, to me, is what strikes me as “90s” about what they’re doing. After the dominance of arena rock and nakedly superficial pop for the second half of the 80s, what felt refreshing about rock music in early 1990s, when I was a kid, was the deconstructionist aesthetics of bands who took the best elements of mainstream rock and pop and combined them with the noisier and more challenging sounds that had been bubbling up from punk and metal for years. We often talk about Nirvana as some seismic break with 80s rock but, in actuality, Nirvana was, at their core, an anthemic rock band. They were just an anthemic rock band who weren’t afraid to embrace noise, chaos, and the particularistic in music and lyric writing. 

Djunah absolutely nails this ethos on Femina Furens, writing songs that feel heavy and loud and punishing even as they simultaneously feel deeply intimate, like they could only come from this very unique band, with their specific experiences and point of view and approach to sound and language. 

I’m actually seeing Djunah tonight, and I’m really looking forward to hearing how these songs translate live. Like I said, this album is already setting a high water mark for music this year, for me, so I’d strongly encourage you to check this band out if you haven’t, yet.