Lost Treasures
Julianna Raye
Something Peculiar
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Signed to Warner Brothers by Lenny Waronker, produced by Jeff Lynne, supported by Richard Tandy and Mike Campbell. You’d think with credentials like that, Julianna Raye’s Something Peculiar would be a well-known debut and the start of a successful recording career, rather than merely a footnote in Jeff Lynne’s discography. As an outstanding example of pure pop, it surely deserves better.
Sometime around 1990, Raye moves to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career. Signed by Waronker as a singer-songwriter, she meets Lynne through her cousin, Michael Kamen. Lynne is impressed by her songs and agrees to produce the record. He does most of the guitar work and some of the keyboard parts as well as playing bass. Tandy plays piano and Phil Jones rounds out the band on drums.
On release, Something Peculiar received a fair amount of critical acclaim, landing as one of NPR’s Top Ten Records of 1992. There were, however, no hit singles and the album failed to chart. Waronker left Warner Brothers and Raye found herself with neither a label nor any momentum in terms of sales.
The songs on Something Peculiar are remarkable in both their range and their quality. “Limbo,” “Peach Window,” “Roses” are catchy upbeat pop with a 70s AM feel. The title track, “Laughing Wild,” and “In My Time” are midtempo and a little more adult, but still solid pop, with “Laughing Wild” featuring a bluesy solo by Campbell. “I’ll Get You Back” is downright quirky, based on a charming if cartoonish Middle Eastern rhythm. “Taking Steps” and “Nicola” are piano ballads and both are beautiful and touching, the former a stunningly honest testament to a daughter’s love for her father. The arrangements and production by Lynne are clean and less cluttered than his work with either ELO or Dave Edmunds, proving a closer approximation to the Wilburys sound.
Raye subsequently released two other albums, 2002’s Restless and 2009’s Dominoes. Neither bear much similarity to Something Peculiar, offering vocal jazz and bossa nova respectively.
Currently, Something Peculiar is out-of-print, but can be easily purchased through eBay, GEMM and the amazon Marketplace. Released at a time when most folks thought there was no more major label pure pop, Something Peculiar is a persuasive counterexample and a worthy lost treasure.
—Peter Marston
This album continues to be played on the radio out here in Hawaii. Twenty-one years and it still sounds great on the airwaves. It’s wild seeing this post after just playing “Peach Window” last week on the air and then a few days ago spinning “Limbo”. Julianna also performed on Robin Danar’s album a few years ago. Love her voice. 🙂
WOW..that is fascinating, Michael. It’s heartening, of course, but I never would have guessed it was a staple anywhere! Must be that special Hawaiian ‘uhane’! ;-P
She’s a treasure. Her album was huge here when it came out and as the article mentions, she was one of NPR’s top albums that year. That album should have been a bigger pop album. Grunge probably kept it from further rock airplay but it should have scored more at the Hot Adult Contemporary charts where Tom Petty and other heritage rock acts started to take over when grunge ruled the airwaves.
I agree, Michael…it had the pedigree lined up to grab attention of radio programmers, that’s for sure…w/ Jeff Lynne activity then, at a height not seen since the late 70s/early 80s(and *that sound* that is so Lynnesian)…it would appear to be a case of classic label mis-management of priorities as there was plenty there for a variety of then-existing radio formats to latch onto.