PureVolume

Humphrey Bogart watches Ingrid Bergman's plane take off. Bill Murray whispers in Scarlett Johansson's ear. John Travolta and Uma Thurman dance to Chuck Berry, Dustin Hoffman tells Charles Durning he is really a man. Classic, iconic moments of love, loss and life. This is the music of Julian Velard.

Julian is that rarest of artists, a pop songwriter and a storyteller. Think Elton John, Joe Jackson, Elvis Costello combined with Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino and Steven Spielberg. He writes catchy tunes while creating indelible characters that encompass the pain, humor and joy of life. And you can sing along as well. No mean feat.

Holed up in west London since Virgin Music took him under their wings, the Brooklyn émigré is, in his own words, the son of "two massively insane individuals": mum's a former 'Jeopardy' champion who loves to knit and smoke; dad is a "diabetic Frenchman who screams, he just yells at people. He used to work in computers, a massive nerd, has a PHD in mathematics." All of this is infused in Julian, a man who's as enthusiastic as he is angry, amiable as he is attitudinal - a fireball of energy forever stoked by his genes.

It's not surprising that Julian chose his own path through music, then. As a fan, his first gigs were Rage Against The Machine, Frank Black and other bands trading on teen angst in the early '90s. But without a parent's embarrassing record collection to kick against, Julian was into big, bold and brash pop from the off, listening to Journey while his friends gazed at their shoes to Pavement. The favored names that roll off Julian's tongue are XTC, Annie Lennox, Girls Aloud and Guillemots, though it's Stevie Wonder, Ben Folds and Tom Waits who are most apt when giving Julian's debut, 'The Planeteer', the big up.

Along with classic pop storytelling, Julian's music is ruled by his passion for movies. Ever since working as delivery boy for the neighborhood video store, where he "rented two flicks a night instead of doing homework," films have permeated his psyche. The ten tracks on 'The Planeteer' are truly cinematic in scope, ranging from the matinee idol worship of "Jimmy Dean and Steve McQueen", in which Julian laments the loss of innocence in a post 9/11 world, to the epic "End of an Era", which pictures a man giving the final blow to a crumbling relationship in a seedy red-light district hotel. Whether singing about loss and heartbreak, or going out for sushi and enticing a girl with free cable TV, Julian brings a wry world-weariness to his songs, the uncommon ability to tug on heart strings while raising an eyebrow.

'It's a record that people are going to dig, ear candy. I love saccharine stuff. I love Toto and Steely Dan and my palette is very much out of that '70s landscape. Back then, people were like, I'm going to make a perfect album. There was no marketing with Elton. It was just, like, I'm this fabulous, little balding dude who writes songs and wears Donald Duck suits and I'm a freak. And people were like, yeah, you're awesome! Pop music is what it is, and that's what's beautiful about it."

After years hanging round the NYC scene and seeing gigging partner Regina Spektor steam on, in late-2006 Julian borrowed money from his dad to record 'The Movies Without You' EP, employing the help of indie-pop guru Roger Greenawalt. After several US labels declined ("They say I'm too weird for pop and too pop for weird," says Julian), Britain heard his songs via Myspace, went along to his comedy-loaded gigs, and fell in love. Since signing to Virgin, Julian has spent the past year putting the finishing touches on 'The Planeteer' with someone who knows a bit about Pop music: Robbie Williams' producer Steve Power.

It's a tale of the underdog, from Julian's bizarre upbringing, years of bumping around doing odd jobs, including a stint as a pre-school gym teacher where, far too often, he was "hungover with hula hoops." And now the fish out of water New Yorker in London. But being the underdog is something Julian relates to. His life reads like a character out of a Wes Anderson film. You can almost picture it.

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