The Franco-American duo transforms contemporary anxiety into sunlit ascents.
There is something unsettling in all this sweetness. Behind the cottony harmonies, retro-futuristic keyboards and weightless melodies, Monkey Mind is an album traveled by unease. Written in Los Angeles in the wake of the 2025 fires and Trump’s return to the White House, the new album by the Franco-American duo makes lightness a survival strategy.
Produced by Jonathan Rado of Foxygen – the sonic architect behind The Lemon Twigs and Weyes Blood – Monkey Mind trades some of the lush, artisanal bricolage of their early days for a more organic texture, recorded up close to the breath of the instruments. Without losing any of their dreamy sophistication, the tracks gain in depth.
We Think of Stereolab and Californian Soft Rock
Wide Awake has the vibe of euphoric city pop, while Doom Mood, constructed like a palindrome, blends contemporary malaise, seventies piano rock and a tropical touch. Further on, Shinkansen speeds along a sexy and futuristic groove, while Tracy Hills disarms with its tenderness carried by a single guitar and the faint echo of an electronic organ.
As is often the case with Juliette Pearl Davis and Joachim Polack, one thinks of Stereolab, the seventies Californian soft rock or space-age pop. But Pearl & the Oysters always avoids the trap of mere pastiche. Monkey Mind thus resembles its era: anxious, saturated, hyperactive… but still capable of dreaming.
Monkey Mind (Stones Throw/Bigwax). Release on June 26.
