Yup, Juliette Lewis Is The Singer For Dillinger/Mastodon Supergroup
Ben Weinman has been teasing both his new supergroup and his working with award-winning actress Juliette Lewis for a while now, and guess what, it appears it’s officially all the same thing
The PRP reports that during a call with Jose Mangin of Liquid Metal, the Dillinger Escape Plan guitarist revealed that Lewis will be handling lead vocals for Giraffe Tongue Orchestra, his new project featuring Brent Hinds of Mastodon, Pete Griffin of Dethklok, and Thomas Pidgen of the Mars Volta.
“Well actually, there have been some personnel changes throughout the years, it’s something we’ve been working on for a long time and interestingly enough we finished all the music and we’re finalizing all the vocals now, Juliette Lewis is singing on the project right now along with some other guest people.”
“…Me and her have become pretty close friends and she’s amazing, obviously I’m a huge fan of her work as an actress and many years ago I saw her band Juliette and the Licks play and like most people I was pretty skeptical. I’m like, “Oh another actress or actor that has a band, like vanity project blah, blah, blah.” So I went into the show and I basically saw somebody that gave 110%. By the end of the show she was drenched in sweat, she was throwing herself into the crowd, and when I thought about it I saw this person putting all her energy and spirit into this music, I thought this was almost more real that most bands because she doesn’t need this.
She doesn’t need to be playing in front of 500 people on this shitty ugly club, you know? She’s a successful actress–she did a 9-minute-long acting scene with Robert DeNiro for god sakes. And here she is by choice in a grungy club with a dirty toilet just putting everything into it, so when we were thinking about singers and people to collaborate, all of a sudden I was like “You know what? I think that could be cool.”
I know we’ve all seen this coming for a while, so it’s no big surprise. Still, you have to wonder if Weinman and company looked far and wide for the perfect singer before working Lewis, or if her star power was the primary reason she got hired. That’s sort of the point of a supergroup, though, I guess.
We’ll have to see when the album comes out on Weinman’s Party Smasher Inc. later this year. Here’s Juliette & The Licks’ “Hot Kiss” video, if you want to judge Lewis’ ability for yourself.
