Mojo Rising

9 July 2013 | 10:24 am | Izzy Tolhurst

"I wouldn’t dare try to write about something I didn’t know, but at the same time I appreciate a bit of a tall story… Sometimes, you just make them a little bit more colourful than the actual event."

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Mojo Juju is, as Winston Churchill once described Russia, “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”. Her music is sexy and sinister, dark and vintage, and her fashion sense impeccable, aided no doubt by her partner, Taryn Vankan, a wildly creative local costume designer.

The first nugget of surprise is delivered when she calls, immediately apologising for her tardiness, saying, “Sorry, I was just talking to my manager, he was teaching me how to hold my own in a fight. That's why I have a manager!” The essential tactic? “Don't get to the ground. The ground is bad,” she warns.

Her songs reveal tales of seedy, dimly lit bars; vices and infidelity; love, loss and lust; and, apparently, some of them are “frighteningly real”. In other songs, there is a delicate balance of fact and fiction, though Juju insists, “It's better if I don't tell you which ones are which, our lawyers have advised us not to name names!”

And while she never lets truth get in the way of a good story, Juju acknowledges that storytelling must still bear conviction, even if liberties are taken with the facts. “I wouldn't dare try to write about something I didn't know, but at the same time I appreciate a bit of a tall story… Sometimes, you just make them a little bit more colourful than the actual event. But I think in the essence of all those songs there's something people can relate to.”

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The tales are also a tribute to 1940s cinema, literature and fashion, which has been a long-standing influence for Juju. Her grandparents were utter “jazz buffs”, and in their company she listened to the likes of Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday. Her parents favoured songwriters from the '60s and '70s, like Neil Young and James Taylor, which Juju believes, “aided [her] storytelling”. However, the singer-songwriter believes, “The biggest discovery I made independently was Tom Waits, and he sold me on the Americana tradition.

“A lot of my inspiration has come from cinema and literature, as much as other music,” she elaborates. “Like Raymond Chandler and Chester Himes, and that sort of thing. It kind of relates to that soul scene anyway. I really think they all relate to one another.”

Juju is about to commence her One For The Road Tour, lapping the country once more before jetting off to Europe. “The last time I was in Europe I was just travelling around and somehow, on my first night in Madrid, I got thrown out of a bar, minutes after walking into it. I have no idea what they said to me, only that there was a clear message to leave immediately… I was told later they thought I was a gypsy. That same friend then suggested I might need to clean myself up a bit!”

Thinking that Juju's sound (and apparently look) may be well suited to the Eastern Bloc; she jovially severs such an inquiry, saying, “I'm not sure if my liver and kidneys will hold out for an extended tour of Eastern Europe! But, anywhere they'll have me, I'll go.”

Mojo Juju's self-titled debut is apparently getting a strong reception in Japan, “It's been really nice to see this Japanese fanbase growing, and we haven't even been there yet! A friend of mine saw a Japanese review of the album and, while she couldn't read it, there were a lot of exclamation marks, so I'm hoping they were really good exclamation marks, not, like, 'This is really terrible!!!”