Mojo Juju couldn’t be more real on her third solo release Native Tongue, cementing her place amongst Australia’s truest, most authentic artists today. Juju has spent the past two decades as everything from a seasick troubadour to a greased-up heartbreaker, but here it feels as if she has finally managed to strip back the grand conceptualism of her past incarnations and just be the story.
From the instant the hauntingly beautiful choral vocals begin to mesmerise the listener on the title track (courtesy of the Pasefika Vitoria Choir), you can feel it in your bones – this is vital. This is passion, protest, love and anger distilled and it hits like a ten-tonne hammer.
Through the boozy swagger of tracks like ‘Shut Your Mouth’, the future-funk banger ‘Far Too Late’ and the downright harrowing ‘1000 Years’, Juju exorcises an entire lifetime of displacement and systemic oppression, reaching deep down into the pit of her stomach and pulling up everything she can get her hands around. Native Tongue is an absolute master-class, so make a point to hear this album.
9/10
