Juliette and the Licks - Speaking Their Language

I am sick of talking to journalists who don't care about music. I wonder if they've even heard the album, Juliette Lewis disdainfully suggests. "These people don't want to be fans."

Lewis loves rock'n'roll, revels in its story-telling possibilities, the mythologizing of location and emotion and the slinky hip-swinging sensuality of the beat. When The Licks perform, she recalls Robert Plant.

It becomes abundantly clear to The Skinny that Juliette and the Licks are not a Hollywood star's vanity project, as she continues: "I hate it when they call the band session musicians. You should come backstage and meet them. It's all about them." The live performance says the same thing. These aren't tasteful professionals adding subtle frills to Juliette's fantasy of being "rock". They have all the strengths (passion, style, authority) of a real band - and their weaknesses too (like the over-use of rock clichés, and sounding too much like The Who). Most importantly, they fit Juliette's on-stage personality: southern rock god, backdoor man and swaggering poet.

Because the question is: why would a Hollywood actress swap a million pounds per movie for a year long tour across Europe? She recently performed at Glasgow's ABC and last year she was at tiny King Tut's. As vanity projects go, re-energising heavy blues rock could potentially prove stupid. Take the Hollywood money and advertise lemonade in Japan. It's simple economics.

Back in the interview, the Skinny says Juliette's latest album is confident - alternate it with Led Zep and Kathyrn Williams, and it stands up - especially the single Hot Kiss. At this, she is delighted: "I've been using exactly the same word. On this album, we are finding a distinctive voice." They still tend to rely on familiar tropes and well-tested riffs - it's called post-modernism or the anguish of influence - but there are moments of intense drama and joyous abandon.

"There's a bit of everything on this album," she confirms. "There's story-telling (Death of a Whore), pure rock outs and distillations of sexual desire." She explains that Hot Kiss was written on tour when she was missing her boyfriend. "It's kinda like those moments when words wouldn't do," she admits.

It's not until The Licks perform, and show how much they give, through posturing, banter and volume, that it is clear how much she wants to communicate. The charm is that Juliette's music demands dancing. Even the boys in the Marilyn Manson hoodies jerk like ejaculating corpses. Disdainful dyke couples are nodding their heads and holding hands, a couple of art school chicks are throwing shapes to each other while men covered in tattoos are stroking their beards or balls in quiet satisfaction. The mosh-pit is going mental and Juliette is stoking them up, down on the floor and crooning. Her stage outfit is unsexy - black lycra tights and striped pants over the top, like Freddy Mercury hinting at Superman. This is about far more than image. At the end of the gig, people rant about "energy" and "fire". They don't want to go home, but the security is loudly insistent.

Juliette concludes the interview by saying that The Skinny could write what it wanted. She is engaging and pleasant, filled with vitality, and loves music. She isn't selling her albums through her looks and even if she was, how many serious musicians are guilty of the same thing? Rock music is about glamour and sex. Using what you've got to get what you want is where the sharp minds are heading, and it works. However, Juliette has to wade through waves of lazy misogyny and celebrity-obsession to get where she needs to, but when she tells the crowd that they've been brilliant, the old rock clichés spark up with a flame of sincerity.