Intro-jucing Your Favourite New Girl Band: Juce

MTV know a good thing when we see it, and we know you're going to love Juce.

Wednesday, May 28, 2014 - 12:47

By Tamara Roper

For a band with three songs and one music video to their name, Juce have had a surprisingly successful 2014. It’s possibly because they’ve spent two years making their band the best left-of-centre girl group since the first incarnation of the Sugababes. It’s also likely because they’re the older versions of the girls you wish you were friends with at school.

Either way, it’s difficult not to develop full on fan girl crushes on Juce (Chalin, Georgia and Cherish) the minute you see their OTT kitsch-cute video for debut single ‘Call You Out’. A distinctly twenty first century homage to #teenproblems, the video is 80s, 90s and naughty rolled into a smile-inducing, heartwarming friendship fable.

It’s weird that the three haven’t been soul sisters forever, as they bounce around on their MTV photoshoot talking about bikini waxes and self-tan. “We met a couple of years ago at a party. We weren’t mates before, we just met and were liking the same songs, so I did the embarrassing first date thing and said ‘do you want to make a band’” Georgia explains. “Chalin didn’t even have my name so she saved me in her phone as ‘girl band ting’”.

Despite all coming from music related backgrounds (Cherish channeled goth chic in old band Ipso Facto and Chalin used to work for Boiler Room), Chalin insists that Juce is completely new for them. “It’s our baby. Playing an instrument in a band is different to writing as part of one, different. Other projects we were involved in were lessons for this one”.

Lessons learned have landed Juce a spot on the Radio 1 Big Weekend line up, after sending ‘Call You Out’ over to BBC Introducing. Though this success has appeared in the space of a couple of months, it’s taken two years of graft to get them here, spent “working on sound, working on live and writing. We didn’t want to have one thing and then share it, and have nothing left.”

Their game plan seems to have worked out, as with debut shows and the Big Weekend round the corner nerves don’t seem to be playing a massive part. “I think we’re probably more nervous to play in front of all of our friends in London. We’ve been talking about it and walking around all like ‘have you seen my Juce pants’. Now we’re going to be on stage!”

With a bank of songs ready to be fired out into the ether to an audience who are clearly eager to hear it, the girls are still hot on harnessing what it means to be a young person getting into music. “Pop music when you’re 13 is a really big deal, that’s when you really fall in love with stuff. To have female musicians who don’t take themselves too seriously is a good thing.”

Their audience aren’t just girls, as the ‘Juce babes’ range from little cousins to “old music peers who are totally left field”. The throwback appeal and look that Juce have grabbed is reminiscent of 90s R’n’B groups who they all count as inspiration- naming TLC, Sugababes and even early Girl Aloud as icons.

Currently they’re into a mixed bag of artists – everyone from Bruno Mars to Todd Terje. Their dream collaboration comes in the form of Pharrell; “We could get Pharell to produce it, and Andre 3000 can sing and spit” says Chalin. Ed Sheeran’s name is tossed about too (“he’s like ginger Jesus”), though perhaps with more than a hint of irony...

Our conversation rolls into festival antics and which band member once managed to get into Snoop Dogg’s tipi at Glastonbury. It’s classic girl talk of the kind that trickles its way into their music, and leaves us with a hankering to see them work their magic on stage. Having just signed to Island Records, it’s going to be a summer filled with Juce vibes.