Deriving their name from a French expression that gently mocks sappy lovers, the Paris-based indie rock duo Fleur bleu.e — Delphine and Vladimir — features two accomplished musicians, who have been performing and writing music since they were both children: Vladimir was a guitarist in French garage rock band Brats, an act that recorded and released a Yarol Popouard-produced album that was supported with touring across France with BB Brunes. Delphine began playing cello in classical orchestras before learning guitar and playing at alternative festivals across Paris with her first band Le Studio Jaune.
When the duo met in 2019, they bonded over a mutual love of The Smiths, Beach House, Françoise Hardy and Elli et Jacno among others, and a desire to craft music that was emotionally ambiguous while being fueled by their teenage myths. Seemingly influenced by dramas and nightmares, their artistic vision is to go beyond the prism of the gender binary and call upon the listener to express their fragility, celebrating one’s inner world and the beauty in imperfections.
They released their critically applauded single “Horizon” late last year and building upon a buzz worthy profile in their native France, the duo released their Ben Etter-produced second single “STOLT 89” earlier this month. Centered around shimmering and reverb-drenched guitars, propulsive yet simple backbeat and Delphine’s gorgeous vocals, the song sonically — to my ears, at least — brings Bloom-era Beach House to mind while being an emotionally ambiguous feminist manifesto.
The recently released video for “STOLT 89” employs a decidedly DIY aesthetic that features the duo goofing off in front of a green screen — and throughout, the video has a blown-out, fuzzy quality reminiscent of public access TV
Deriving their name from a French expression that gently mocks sappy lovers, the Paris-based indie rock duo Fleur bleu.e — Delphine and Vladimir — features two accomplished musicians, who have been performing and writing music since they were both children: Vladimir was a guitarist in French garage rock band Brats, an act that recorded and released a Yarol Popouard-produced album that was supported with touring across France with BB Brunes. Delphine began playing cello in classical orchestras before learning guitar and playing at alternative festivals across Paris with her first band Le Studio Jaune.
When the duo met in 2019, they bonded over a mutual love of The Smiths, Beach House, Françoise Hardy and Elli et Jacno among others, and a desire to craft music that was emotionally ambiguous while being fueled by their teenage myths. Seemingly influenced by dramas and nightmares, their artistic vision is to go beyond the prism of the gender binary and call upon the listener to express their fragility, celebrating one’s inner world and the beauty in imperfections.
They released their critically applauded single “Horizon” late last year and building upon a buzz worthy profile in their native France, the duo released their Ben Etter-produced second single earlier this month. Centered around shimmering and reverb-drenched guitars, propulsive yet simple backbeat and Delphine’s gorgeous vocals, the song sonically — to my ears, at least — brings Bloom-era Beach House to mind while being an emotionally ambiguous feminist manifesto.
Rising Toulouse, France-based singer/songwriter Laure Briard has had a highly uncommon path to professional music: Briard bounced around several different interests and passes, including studying literature and criminology, and even doing some acting before concentrating on music full-time in 2013.
Briard initially signed with Tricatel Records, who released her debut EP. After the EP’s release, Briard met Juilen Gasc and Eddy Cramps. And began working on what would become her full-length debut, 2015’s Révélation. Inspired by Françoise Hardy, Margo Guryan and Vashti Bunyan, Révélation featured modern and poetic lyricism. She then signed with Midnight Special Records, who released her sophomore album, 2016’s Sur la Piste de Danse.
Since Sur la Pisa de Danse, Briard’s work has increasingly been influenced by Bossa nova: 2018’s Coração Louco, featured lyrics written and sung in Portuguese — and a guest spot from acclaimed Brazilian JOVM mainstays and Latin Grammy Award nominated act Boogarins. 2019’s Un peu plus d’amour s’il vous plâit, which was released through Michel Records in Canada, Midnight Special Records in Europe and Burger Records here in the States continued Briard’s ongoing love affair with Bossa nova and Brazilian music.
Released last week through Michel Records in North America, Dinosaur City Records in Australia and Midnight Special Records in Europe, the Toulouse-based singer/songwriter’s latest effort Eu Voo sees Briard continuing her successful collaboration with Boogarins, as well as with her longtime collaborators Vincent Guyot, a.k.a. Octopus and Marius Duflot. Over the past year or so I’ve managed to write about two of the EP’s singles:
EP title track “Eu Voo,” 60s Scott Walker-like orchestral psych pop meets 70s AM radio rock-like take on Bossa nova, featuring Briard’s ethereal vocals cooing in Portuguese, twinkling Rhodes, shimmering guitars and jazz-fusion that evokes the swooning euphoria of reuniting with a long-lost love.
“Supertrama,” which continues in a similar path as its predecessor — 60s Scott Walker-like orchestral psych pop meeting 70s AM radio rock featuring twinkling piano, shuffling jazz-like drumming, a sinuous bass line, a regal horn arrangement, angular bursts of guitar and a soaring hook within an expansive yet breezy song arrangement. But just underneath the breezy surface, the song evokes a familiar bittersweet ache.
In this edition of the Q&A, I chatted with Laure Briard about a number of different topics including her hometown’s favorite spots to eat and see music, how she’s been keeping busy during pandemic-related lockdowns and restrictions, her unusually winding path to a music career and much more.
Check it out below.
Photo Credit: Kamila K. StanleyPhoto Credit: Andre Peniche
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WRH: I’ve been to Europe twice (Holland and Germany) but sadly, I’ve never been to France. I hope to see France – after all of this passes, of course. But for this question let’s imagine the pre-COVID world: I arrive in Toulouse. What would I need to see? Where should I eat? Where would I catch local music?
WRH: The COVID-19 pandemic has managed to put all of our plans and desires on an indefinite hold. You’ve worked on your latest EP, the recently released Eu Voo (more on that later!) but how have you been occupying your time? Have you picked up any new or unusual hobbies? Are you binge-watching anything?
LB: In September I moved to Seignosse, it’s very close to the ocean. So every day I go to the beach and walk while listening to music, looking at the waves. Otherwise, I try to write songs, I read, and yeah lately I watched Le bureau des légendes. It’s a French TV show. I was very addicted!
WRH: You’ve had an unusual path to music: You’ve bounced around and pursued a number of different interests and passions — you studied literature and criminology, and even tried to act at one point before getting into music. Have these various pursuits, career interests and professional twists and turns influenced your work at all? When did you know that music was your thing?
LB: I suppose that it had an impact on my personality so yes it influences my work. I can’t tell how exactly; it’s an abstraction. I knew that music was my thing very late. I was working in a high school for several years and one day I decided to stop and to give all my time to music. I was around 33 years old.
WRH: How would you describe your sound to those unfamiliar with you?
LB: It’s always a tricky question to me…I go in so many directions that it’s hard to summarise in few words. So I would say: poprockpsychbossayéyé ahah!!
WRH: After the release of your sophomore album, your work and sound has been increasingly influenced by and draws from Bossa nova. How did you get into Bossa nova?
LB: I’ve been a huge fan of bossa and tropicalism for years! A friend of mine introduced me to Vinicius De Moraes and Astrud Gilberto by lending me his iPod. I completely fell in love and I started to dig stuff on my own over and over. Then I met this band Boogarins when we were playing at SXSW. We became friends and they helped me to come to Brazil first to play and then for the recordings. Providential encounter!
WRH: Did you know Portuguese before you started recording Bossa nova? How many languages do you know?
LB: No, I didn’t know this language… I learned at the same time I wrote. I only speak English, but not so well.
WRH: I first learned of you and your work through your cover of Sessa’s “Grandeza.” For me, your cover and the original are a perfect example of Bossa nova in my mind. They both have that wistful nostalgia for a past we can’t ever get back – whether it’s our innocence, a lost love, a place we knew and loved that’s been changed or something else. Perhaps because of the pandemic, I thought of concerts, sporting events, gatherings with friends and family, sitting inside bars and chatting with strangers and the like. So, what was about the song that drew you to it? And do you know what Sessa’s response to it was?
LB: Thank you 🙂
We have mutual friends with Sessa. They introduced me to his music that I didn’t know. I listened to the song “Grandeza.” I was completely amazed by the sound, the vibe. I immediately wanted to do something with this song. At the end of the recording of Eu Voo I spent few days in Sao Paulo, and I had the chance to meet him! He seems happy and enthusiastic about this cover idea.
WRH: Eu Voo sees you continuing an ongoing and critically applauded collaboration Latin Grammy-nominated, JOVM mainstays Boogarins and your longtime collaborators Vincent Guyot, a.k.a. Octopus and Marius Duflot. How did the collaboration with Boogarins come about? How was it like to work with them on material? How collaborative were the recording sessions?
LB: The collaboration came after our meeting and my first tour in Brazil. I started to write songs in Portuguese as a challenge then I sent them to them, and they liked it. Thanks to my label Midnight Special Records and people in Brazil like Ana Garcia (and of course Benke from Boogarins) we managed to organize a studio session to record my first EP Coracao Louco in 2018. And then Eu Voo in 2020. In these two cases, I sent demos and we recorded live, doing all of the arrangements together.
WRH: You recorded Eu Voo in São Paulo’s Dissenso Studio last January. How was it like to record the EP in Brazil and in that studio? And knowing everything that happened, does that give the EP’s material an even more bittersweet feel to you?
LB: It was like a dream really. In this wonderful studio with wonderful people. Everybody got along so well; it was the perfect crew! I do feel very nostalgic of the recording session, especially with the pandemic occurring now. I feel like it was ages ago as if it was in a different time. I try to put things into perspective but it’s not easy sometimes.
WRH: According press to notes Eu Voo’s material can traces its origins back to when you had returned from a 2017 trip to Brazil. Some months later, you had suffered through an illness – pneumopathy – and was taking Tramadol for pain and other symptoms. For me, the EP’s material is imbued with the aching longing and nostalgia for that special place that changed your life. As I listened to the EP there’s this subtle acknowledgement of mortality, that all of this is a fleeting fever dream. That’s my sense of it at least. How much did your illness inform or inspire the EP’s material?
LB:I was sick while composing my first EP, so I don’t really know how much it did influence it or not.
WRH: Sonically, Eu Voo’s material reminds me of Scott Walker, AM Radio Rock and psych pop. Did that influence the material at all?
LB: I don’t know about Scott Walker; but I’ll listen to it!
WRH: “Eu Voo” is one of my favorite songs on the EP by the way. If I remember it correctly, before you recorded the song, you decided that you should speed the tempo up and that you wanted the arrangements to be punchier and catchier. What inspired that decision?
LB: Yes, I did! We had previously recorded this song for my first EP, but we didn’t have time to complete it to a satisfactory level. So I really had the necessary time-lapse to think about how I wanted it to sound and its artistic direction. I felt like the song had really a dance potential. That’s why I went with this idea of the catchy up-tempo. I suggested it to my collaborators, and they all agreed.
WRH: You worked with a longtime collaborator NORMA for the playfully surreal visual for “Eu Voo.” How did the concept for the video come about?
LB: It was Norma who had the idea to shoot in the desert and also for the wings! I put all my trust in her vision. Her ideas are always bright, creatives, and very much D.I.Y oriented. So, she came to me and mentioned the wings. We were influenced by Arizona Dream. We have a lot of references in common, so we get along easily. She also lives on the Atlantic coast and the desert where we filmed, Les Bardenas, is only a couple of hours away. It was the perfect plan!
WRH: “Supertrama” sees you collaborating with Giovanni Cidreira, who you met through Boogarins. How was it like to work with him?
LB: We did a long-distance collaboration. I sent him a guitar melody I had written and asked him if he would like to write the lyrics. About a week later, he sent me the same melody played on the piano with some beautiful words. We did the arrangements live when I came to Sa
o Paulo to record in the studio with my team. I would have loved for him to be there with us, but he couldn’t be there, unfortunately. He completely trusted us with the song.
WRH: Now that the EP’s released, what’s next for you?
Throughout the course of last year, I wrote a bit about the rising Toulouse, France-based singer/songwriter Laure Briard. Briard has had an uncommon path to professional music: the French singer/songwriter bounced around several different interests and passions, including studying literature and criminology, and even doing a bit of acting before concentrating on music full-time on music back in 2013.
The Toulouse-based singer/songwriter initially signed with Tricatel Records, who released her debut EP. After the EP’s release, Briard met with Juilen Gasc and Eddy Cramps and began working on what would become her attention grabbing full-length debut, 2015’s Révélation, an effort inspired by Françoise Hardy, Margo Guryan and Vashti Bunyan that featured a very modern and poetic lyricism. She then signed with Midnight Special Records, who released her sophomore album, 2016’s Sur la Piste de Danse.
Since Sur la Pisa de Danse, Briard’s work has increasingly been influenced by Bossa nova: 2018’s Coração Louco, featured lyrics written and sung in Portuguese — and a guest spot from acclaimed Brazilian JOVM mainstays and Latin Grammy Award nominated act Boogarins. 2019’s Un peu plus d’amour s’il vous plâit, which was released through Michel Records in Canada, Midnight Special Records in Europe and Burger Records here in the States continued Briard’s ongoing love affair with Bossa nova and Brazilian music.
Slated for a February 19, 2021 through Michel Records in North America, Dinosaur City Records in Australia and Midnight Special Records in Europe, the Toulouse-based singer/songwriter’s forthcoming EP En Voo sees Briard continuing her successful collaboration with Boogarins, as well as with her longtime collaborators Vincent Guyot, a.k.a. Octopus and Marius Duflot. If you were frequenting this site over the course of last year, you may recall that I wrote about En VOO’s first single, EP title track “En Voo,” 60s Scott Walker-like orchestral psych pop meets 70s AM radio rock-like take on Bossa nova, featuring Briard’s ethereal vocals cooing in Portuguese, twinkling Rhodes, shimmering guitars and jazz-fusion that evokes the swooning euphoria of reuniting with a long-lost love.
“Supertrama,” En Voo’s second and latest single continues in a similar vein as its predecessor: 60s Scott Walker-like orchestral psych pop meets 70s AM rock featuring twinkling piano, shuffling jazz-like drumming, a sinuous bass line, a regal horn arrangement, angular bursts of guitar and a soaring hook within an expansive yet breezy song arrangement. But just underneath the breezy surface, the song evokes a familiar bittersweet ache. The track can trace its origins to a piano melody that Briard wrote in France. She then took the track too Brazilian musician and composer Giovanni Cidreira, who helped write the song’s lyrics. The track, along with the rest of the EP was recorded in São Paulo-based Dissenso Studio with Boogarins as her backing band.
“I met Giovani through the Boogarins, who he both collaborates and shares a friendship with,” Briard says of her collaboration with Cidreira. “I admire Giovani’s voice, his words, his stories, and the possibility of working with him one day quickly became a reality. Once I’d written the melody of ‘Supertrama,’ I took the plunge and asked Giovani if he would write the lyrics with me. He took the melody and wrote lyrics which don’t quite tell a story, but rather feelings, impressions, and memories. Just like the rest of the EP, the arrangements were made in real time in the studio. Pieuvre Convex was responsible for the final modulation of the track – he’s a king in that area!”
Rising Toulouse, France-based singer/songwriter Laure Briard has had an uncommon path to professional music: Briard has bounced around several different interests and passions, including studying literature and criminology and doing a bit of acting before fully concentrating on music in 2013.
Signing with Tricatel Records, Briard released her debut EP. Interestingly, as the story goes, the Toulouse-based singer/songwriter met Juilen Gasc and Eddy Cramps and began working on her full-length debut, Révélation, a pop-rock leaning album that received attention for material inspired by Françoise Hardy, Margo Guryan and Vashti Bunyan that featured a very modern and poetic lyricism. Briard released her sophomore album, 2016’s Sur la Piste de Danse through Midnight Special Records.
But since the release of Sur la Pisa de Danse, Briard’s work has increasingly been influenced by Bossa nova with 2018’s Coração Louco, featuring lyrics written and sung in Portuguese — and a a guest spot from acclaimed Brazilian JOVM mainstays and Latin Grammy Award nominated act Boogarins. Building upon a growing profile, Briard’s third album, last year’s Un peu plus d’amour s’il vous plâit was released through Michel Records in Canada, Midnight Special Records in Europe and Burger Records here in the States.
Earlier this year, Briard tackled São Paulo, Brazil-based singer/songwriter and guitarist Sessa’s “Grandeza.” The cover continued her ongoing love affair with Brazil and Brazilian music while crafting a dreamy rendition full of the wistful and bittersweet ache to the things and people you can’t have — and may never have again.
The Toulouse-based singer/songwriter’s forthcoming effort Eu Voo finds Briard continuing her successful collaboration with Boogarins, as well as her long-time collaborators Octopus (Vincent Guyot) and Marius Duflot. The EP’s first single, EP title track Eu Voo is a breezy 70s AM radio rock-take on Bossa nova, centered around Briard’s ethereal cooing in Portuguese, twinkling Rhodes, shimmering guitars and punchy jazz fusion-inspired drumming to help evoke swooning euphoria of reuniting with your love.
Written at home, several months after her first trip to Brazil in 2017, while suffering from pneumopathy and taking Tramadol, “Eu Voo” was recorded earlier this year — but as Briard explains the song really came to life earlier this year during recording sessions at Dissenso Studio in São Paulo. “‘Eu Voo’ is a song about crossing the ocean to find one’s beloved,” Briard explains,. “During the new recording session in January, I absolutely wanted to do the song while changing the initial arrangements: accelerate the tempo and make it more punchy, catchy. With the Boogarins in the chorus singing with me ‘estou a travessar o oceano,’ ‘I cross the sea!'”
Directed by her frequent collaborator Norma, the recently released video finds Briard meeting a worker in the desert, where she gets measured for personally-made wings. The rest of the time, we follow our wing-wearing protagonist running in circles in an attempt to fly. Much like the accompanying song, the video is a bittersweet fever dream.
“Laure has been my friend for years, and she has always inspired in me images, settings,” the video’s director Norma explains. “I imagined her as an outlandish heroine in an American indie movie, tender and offbeat. I created a clip of my dreams, and I made for her bird wings, to fly far away from heartaches and pains of the soul, above the towns, overhead canyons, towards the blue horizon. We left the earthy Landes for the surreal landscape of the Bardenas desert, in Spain, where we found our American fantasy. We shot these images in a few hours, as the sun was going down. But as I was closing up the equipment, I felt the desert sand rise – I lifted my head and there before me, Laure was flying. I opened a warm San Miguel and watched her make circles around the twilight.”
Eu Voo EP is slated for a February 19, 2021 release through Michel Records in North America, Dinosaur City Records in Australia and Midnight Special Records in Europe.
Laure Briard is a Toulouse, France-based singer/songwriter, who bounced around quite a bit before fully delving into music: before starting her music career in earnest in 2013, Briard studied literature and criminology and even did a little acting.
Signing to Tricatel Records, Briard released her debut EP. A short time later, she met Juilen Gasc and Eddy Cramps and began working on her full-length debut, Révélation, a pop-rock leaning album released through 2000 Records. And with Révélation, the Toulouse-based singer/songwriter began to receive attention for a sound inspired by Françoise Hardy, Margo Guryan and Vashti Bunyan paired with modern and poetic lyricism.
2016 saw the release of her sophomore album Sur la Piste de Danse through Midnight Special Records. But during the subsequent years, Briard’s work took on an increasing bossa nova influence — and with 2018’s Coração Louco, which featured acclaimed Brazilian JOVM mainstays Boogarins, Briard began writing lyrics in Portuguese. Building upon a growing reputation, the Toulouse-based singer/songwriter’s third album, 2019’s Un peu plus d’amour s’il vous plâit was released through Michel Records in Canada, Midnight Special Records in Europe and Burger Records here in the States.
Continuing her ongoing love affair with Brazil and Brazilian music, Briard’s latest single find her tackling the São Paulo, Brazil-based singer/songwriter and guitarist Sessa’s “Grandeza.” While the original was centered around a sparse arrangement of looping acoustic guitar, gentle percussion and call and response vocals, it’s a dreamy song full of a wistful and bittersweet ache.
Collaborating with Vincent Pieuvre and Emmanuel Mario, Briard’s take on “Grandeza” retails the wistful and bittersweet ache of the original while pairing it with a breezy, 70s AM rock-like arrangement featuring twinkling Rhodes, a sinuous bass line and shimmering guitar and Briard’s plaintive vocals. In some way the song is a wistfully nostalgic ode to the lives and the things we can’t have right now; and probably will not have for quite some time as a result of COVID-19. “I was deeply moved by the beautiful dreamy lyrics of the song, the fearless statement made with vivid imagery yet remaining mysterious and abstract in a way which people can relate to on different levels.”
Founded by Greg Musso, Jacques Daoud and Bruce Sherfield, MAajunga Spirit Orchestrais a Paris-based collective of like-minded artists, musicians and vocalists, who are deeply influenced by soul and gospel. Last year, the collective received international attention, when their single “Hold On” was featured in Remy Martin’s “Team Up For Excellence Campaign.”
Building upon the growing attention of “Hold On,” the members went into the studio to write and record their debut EP, Hold On.“The reaction to ‘Hold On’ was overwhelming.” producer and founding member Greg Musso says in press notes. “We decided to take this unique opportunity to continue spreading the music that we believe brings people together in spirit – mind, body, and soul.”
Produced by the collective’s Greg Musso and recorded live at Paris’ Midilive Studios (formerly known as Vogue Studios), known for seminal recordings by French artists like Françoise Hardy, Jacques Dutronc and Johnny Hallyday, the EP will further establish and expand upon the sound that won them international attention. Of course, the EP will feature, the attention grabbing, EP title track “Hold On,” a much needed bit of uplift and resolve centered around a gospel chorus, soulful led vocals and soaring keys. Sonically and thematically, the song manages to mesh the swaggering and hip-hop influenced gospel of Kirk Franklin with the soulful spirituals of Mavis Staples. Certainly, in these difficult and unusual times, the song’s positive message should resonate with all of us: we’re all gonna have to hold on — to hope, to each other, to each single day — until this passes.
Currently comprised of founding member and primary songwriter Greg Gonzalez (vocals, guitar) with Jacob Tomsky (drums) and Randy Miller (bass), the acclaimed Brooklyn-based dream pop act Cigarettes After Sex can trace their origins back to when Gonzalez formed the band in El Paso. TX back in 2008. Their debut EP, 2012’s I received some attention when “Nothing’s Gonna Hurt You Baby” became a sleeper hit of sorts, after it was licensed for use in commercials.
With the release of 2017’s self-titled debut, Cigarettes After Sex quickly became international sensations. Since its release the album as sold over 550,000 records to date, amassed over 360 million Spotify streams, 2.2 million monthly listeners and 350 million YouTube streams. They’ve been featured in a number of major media outlets including Vice Noisey, V Magazine, Interview, NPR’s Tiny Desk — and their music has appeared in The Handmaid’s Tale, Killing Eve and in a Ralph Lauren ad campaign. Additionally, Taylor Swift, Kylie Jenner, Lana Del Rey, Françoise Hardy, Lily Allen, Busy Phillips and a long list of others have claimed to be fans of the band’s work.
During the week of their full-length debut’s release, the members of the Cigarettes After Sex traveled to Mallorca, Spain. And naturally, each of the band’s individual members consciously let the striking location guide what was to become the initial sessions for their forthcoming sophomore album Cry. “The sound of this record is completely tied to the location for me,” Greg Gonzalez explains in press notes. “Ultimately, I view this record as a film. It was shot in this stunning, exotic location, and it stitches all these different characters and scenes together, but in the end is really about romance, beauty and sexuality. It’s a very personal telling of what those things mean to me.”
While the instrumentation came about quickly — often improvised on the spot — it would be another two years before Gonzalez would attempt to complete the material’s accompanying lyrics. Slated for an October 25, 2019 release through Partisan Records, Cigarettes After Sex’s highly-anticipated sophomore album is influenced by a new, burgeoning romantic relationship, the films of Eric Rohmer and the work of Selena and Shania Twain. Thematically, the material is a cinematic and brooding meditation on the many complex facets of love — meeting, wanting, needing and losing . . . sometimes simultaneously. But interestingly enough, Cry will find the band blending the carnal subtly of its predecessor with a warmer sonic palette.
Cry’s first single is the spectral yet lush “Heavenly.” Centered around Gonzalez’s achingly tender and vulnerable falsetto, hushed and shuffling drumming, shimmering guitar, a sinuous bass line and a soaring hook, the song sonically reminds me a bit of Mazzy Star’s smash hit “Fade Into You.” And much like “Fade Into You,” “Heavenly” is a feverish, narcoleptic dream that expresses a wild, desperate, swooning longing — the sort that mixes devotion, obsession, love and lust into a confusing and wonderful blur. Of course, the song finds the band managing to craft material that’s as intimate as whispered, sweet nothings to a lover while possessing a cinematic (and larger than life) quality. As the band’s Greg Gonzalez explains, the song was “inspired by the overwhelming beauty I felt watching an endless sunset on a secluded beach in Latvia one summer night…”
Comprised of founding members Erin Jenkins and Mathieu Blanchard and recent recruits Chris Dadge (bass), who has had stints in Lab Coast, Alvvays and Chad VanGaalen‘s backing band; and renowned singer/songwriter and guitarist Samantha Savage Smith joining a guitarist, Canadian band Crystal Eyes can trace their origins to the melancholic dream pop the duo wrote while nomadically bouncing back and forth between Tofino, British Columbia and Halifax, Nova Scotia — dream pop that the band’s founding duo has claimed has drawn from Francoise Hardy, Guided by Voices. As a relatively constituted quartet, the band has continued to tour across their native Canada, including consecutive appearances at Pop Montreal.
The band’s latest effort The Female Imagination was written while the band spent time on a lake island in rural Ontario and was recorded on a Tascam 388. And according to the band, the album thematically focuses on and explores the other side of ourselves that we can never quite seem tor reach. The album’s latest single “Already Gone” consists dreamy and ethereal harmonies with layers of shimmering guitars played through copious amounts of reverb and delay pedal and a persistent, driving rhythm and in some way, the song sounds as though it were equally influenced by 60s garage psych — i.e., much like contemporary acts like Raccoon Fighter, The Black Angels, early Dum Dum Girls, Death Valley Girls and countless others but with a moody and sensual feel.
