Stream Essaie Pas’ Dark, Thrilling New Album, Demain Est Une Autre Nuit
It means Tomorrow Is Another Night. Turn out the lights.
Essaie Pas are husband-wife duo Marie Davidson, solo artist, and Pierre Guerineau, an engineer who's worked with Dirty Beaches (among others). Demain Est Une Autre Nuit, which premieres today, is Essaie Pas' fourth album and the first they've released on DFA (out February 19). The album, whose title translates as Tomorrow Is Another Night, was written by the duo between tours after losing both their studio and apartment in Montreal. If you've ever listened to minimal synth music from the '80s and '90s, then you'll hear shades of Das Ding, Oppenheimer Analysis, and Dark Day in Demain, like you do in the sounds of Essaie Pas' New York peers Xeno & Oaklander.
The disconnection Davidson and Guerineau experienced with the shuttering of their Montreal spaces blends with the literal industrial influence of the spot they found to replace their old recording space. Though Demain has an exceptionally ominous quality, the void of the night that Essaie Pas are exploring brings them freedom. Davidson and Guerineau's lack of a physical home base for their music also translates into that same abyss, the darkness of nighttime in which the idea that the sun might never rise gives birth to the fantasy that anything can be possible. If it is always nighttime in the world of Demain (because tomorrow is another night, not another day), then nothing that happens in the sun has any relevance except to make the nighttime more fleeting and urgent. Demain's closing track, "La Chute," which means "The Fall," begins in this other non-place/ your hand was searching for mine, and Demain is kind of a non-place whose sound is searching for something, though it doesn't seem to need to find an answer. My friends betrayed me, Davidson chants, my family is dead, and you?/ You dance to this music/ Liquid under the sun/ The sound of a summer hit.
"Composed between tours, after we lost both our studio and apartment Demain est une autre nuit comes from a period of dislocation for us, both in time (the night) and space," Davidson and Guerineau explained in an email to The FADER. "The central and more stable thing in our life was, and still is, our music. We were lucky enough to find a place to create at the offices of Le Filles Electriques (an independent Interdisciplinary festival producer). During the off-hours after 6 pm, we would go to this empty industrial building, most of the time seeing no one for nights or just the security people, and work on music. This environment influenced our music. The sounds are more clear and open, the production has more depth, on a full frequency range.
"Night is a place of freedom, a place where fantasies and obsessions are not tied by moral constraints. It’s also a time where the feeling of loneliness is stronger and when emotions and memories arise, whether you are facing it or running away from it. I think the tension and sense of urgency on the record comes from that dichotomy."
Stream all of Demain Est Une Autre Nuit below (with lyrics and translation!), preorder the record from DFA, and cop tickets for the March 11 N.Y.C. album release party here.