Jill Cunniff laughs when asked about new Luscious Jackson music. “We’d love to, but we’re average Americans with kids and jobs,” she says. “We’re not independently wealthy. We just don’t have the free time.” It’s the most honest reason for a band hiatus you’ll ever hear.
She’s calling in to mark some anniversaries: Natural Ingredients turns 25, Electric Honey is 20, and even their comeback records, Magic Hour and Baby DJ, are five years in the rearview. “We loved making Magic Hour,” she says of the crowdfunded record. “But anyone who’s done Kickstarter will tell you—it’s way more work than you realize. We had over a thousand CDs to mail out. It was basically just us and a few volunteers. That workload is a big reason we haven’t done it again.”
Still, the band’s DNA remains clear: groove-obsessed, collage-making, genre-smooshing. “We were always searching for grooves,” Cunniff says. “In the early ’90s, everything had that backbone—Deee-Lite, ESG, Tribe Called Quest. It was loops, breakbeats, jazz. My daughter is 15 and I’ve been pulling out those records for her. She’s like, Why isn’t music like this anymore?”
Sampling was at the heart of their sound. “We were entranced by hip-hop—De La Soul, Public Enemy, the Jungle Brothers. But we also loved post-punk, Joni Mitchell, Motorhead. So we just slammed it all together with loops underneath.” That stew produced Citysong, their first moderate hit, and suddenly the ride accelerated. “We went from clubs to REM arenas in what felt like a blink,” she says. “We didn’t even realize how fast it was. One day we’re doing in-stores, the next day it’s Lollapalooza and Saturday Night Live.”
But the real world eventually intruded. “If you’re one of the bands that revolutionizes a sound, you’re usually the one left behind,” Cunniff admits. “We were a harder sell outside New York. People would say, Wait, are you hip-hop? Are you rock? Radio didn’t know what to do with us.”
By 1999’s Electric Honey, Luscious Jackson had already scored their biggest hit with “Naked Eye.” But the landscape had shifted. “Rock radio just stopped playing female artists,” Cunniff recalls. “They created these Lilith Fair stations, but they weren’t powerful. Ladyfingers was supposed to be the single, and it just couldn’t get played properly. If you don’t have radio on a major label, you’re done.” She remembers it as the curtain dropping. “Suddenly it’s Woodstock ’99, active rock, all that testosterone. We felt totally disconnected. It was the end of an era.”
Still, she has affection for Electric Honey. She’d been studying opera with the legendary Marni Nixon. “It improved my vocals so much. I still carry that with me,” she says. And with the lyrics, “Somebody asked me back then, and I said, This record is me better at life. That’s still true. It was personal, it was about improving.”
The band did return briefly in 2013, and Cunniff remains open to doing it again. “We still exist as a band. We put out some vintage T-shirts on Amazon. We play shows when we can. Maybe one day we’ll be those old ladies with long gray hair, guitars slung on, still doing it. Emmylou Harris does it. Why not us?”
For fans still waiting, she has advice: patience. “If you love an artist, you stick with them. Like Neneh Cherry—she puts out a record every five or ten years, and I’m always there for it. That’s how it is. Maybe that’ll be us.”
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