Papooz

Imagine a catchy pop gem, carried by an androgynous and haunting voice, dancing and graceful like a soap bubble, designed as an anthem to joy. PAPOOZ’s summery sounds make their way into our ears never to leave.

Their earlier entracing hit “Ann Wants To Dance” was an extraordinary success with 10 million views on YouTube with its kitschy and summery video and over 20 million streams on Spotify and served as a kick-start for the duo, who had the simplest of goals: to make music, particularly pop, the soundtrack of their lives, out of love for guitars, but above all, to make people happy.

For RESONATE, their fourth album, which began even before the release of its predecessor, Ulysse Cottin (the brunet) and Armand Penicaut (the blond) altered their composition process for the first time, seeking the collaboration of Jesse Harris, an American songwriter known for his work with Melody Gardot, Gabi Hartman, and Norah Jones. “One day,” recalls Armand, “he said to us, “’Let’s try writing a song together.” We got into it. By the end of the day, we had recorded a piece we adored. We repeated this process for about ten days, meeting every afternoon in Ulysse’s studio, writing, playing, and recording. We had the basic structure-a beat, a bassline, a rhythm guitar-but we didn’t spend too much time harmonizing or arranging the pieces. We preferred to keep the spontaneity and energy intact, that immediate creative flow, full of freshness and sexiness.

“After composing and sketching out ten songs in Paris, the group flew to New York to meet Jesse Harris once again, continuing this fluid and laid-back composition process in his loft in the heart of Tribeca. The first song born from these new sessions for PAPOOZ was “Resonate,” a captivating ballad tinged with folk strings and celestial choirs, which would give its name to the album. Armand explains, “Ulysse and I were going through a somewhat complex period.The extensive live tour had exhausted us, my relationship was going through a crisis, and the concept of resonance was a perfect metaphor to sum up the state in which both PAPOOZ and us found ourselves. Resonance is a concept theorized by Hartmut Rosa, a German sociologist and philosopher, as a remedy for the acceleration of the world and the madness of contemporary lives. But beyond the theory, it was necessary to rediscover the magic that existed between Ulysse and me, between our lives and the band, our audience and us, to regain the energy and joy we had in composing.

“Reconnecting with the fervor of their beginnings, like a welcome resurgence, Armand and Ulysse then polished and finalized the score of songs from these writing sessions with producer Patrick Wimberly during a stay in the heart of Brooklyn. Of course, interspersed with nocturnal expeditions in the city that never sleeps. Formerly of Chairlift alongside Caroline Polachek, the duo that revolutionized pop music, Wimberly is a sought-afterproducer-he’s worked with Blood Orange, MGMT, Solange, Cola Boyy, and most recently on Lil Yatchi’s incredible rap opera. He’s a pop genius with whom the duo had been eager to work after a memorable encounter at the Villa Aperta festival at the Villa Médicis. Armand recalls, “We were overjoyed when he accepted. He cranked up the sound, pushed us to rework certain arrangements, added finesse and cohesion to the album. He helped us bring to life this somewhat conceptual and metaphorical idea of resonance without weighing down the pieces but rather polishing them, making them smoother, while retaining the spontaneity of the initial sessions, which was very important to us. Most importantly, he restored our confidence.

RESONATE is more immediate, raw while remaining melodic, melancholic and intimate, blending sentimental ballads and dance calls. The album recaptures the epic breath and the amorous nonchalance that characterized PAPOOZ’s early steps. It’s like the meeting of the amorous sweetness and California vibes of Metronomy with the psychedelic groove of MGMT.

An ideal musical atmosphere visually brought to life by Moodoïd, who handles the visual aspect of the resonance concept. From “Resonate,” with its heartfelt melancholy and haunting guitar, which opens the album, to the very funky and catchy “It Hurts Me,” from the pop-infused and groovy “Don’t YouThink It’d Be Nice” to the slow and fatal “No One Else,” the eleven tracks of the album showcase PAPOOZ’s art of venturing into rock, pop, and song, driven by their knack for melody that touches the heart, with lyrics finely crafted and delivered by the sublimely androgynous voices of Armand and Ulysse, and a joyous, stirring, and nonchalant groove that’s irresistibly infectious. All the while alternating between laughter and tears, melancholy and hedonism, ballads and dance invitations, introspection and letting go, with the same ease and spontaneity. In essence, it resonates with life in each of us.

Ulysse and Armand met fifteen years ago in the never-ending line of a Parisian Patti Smith concert. Their friendship was immediate, with afternoons spent reshaping the world, composing snippets of songs on their guitars, and endless discussions about their love for songwriting. Their enjoyable guitars drew influence from the Beatles, Beach Boys, Steely Dan, Velvet Underground, and Ry Cooder, all while approaching one of their major influences, Erlend Oye of Kings Of Convenience, and his project oscillating between pop and rock, euphoria and melancholy, The Whitest Boy Alive.

Their love for music spans across the vast landscape of Los Angeles highways, the artsy posture of New York, the psychedelia of the Summer of Love, the sophistication of post-punk, the intimacy of folk, and the flirtation with funk. A grand, hedonistic, and electric mix infused with a burst of pop and refreshing nonchalance! Active for a decade, equally at ease in the studio and on stage, they carried three albums under their belt, from the beginner, homemade, and naive “Green Juice” (2016) to the very groovy and psychedelic “Night Sketches” (2019) created with Adrien Durand of Bon Voyage Organisation, passing through “None Of This Matters Now” (2022), folk-oriented and deceptively calm. PAPOOZ has seamlessly fit into the revival of the French pop-rock scene, along with La Femme, Feu Chatterton, Catastrophe, Moodoïd, L’Impératrice, and Bon Voyage Organisation. All of these bands, fueled by the success of Phoenix, assert their influences with a relaxed attitude while exploring new frontiers with electronic elements.

Cornelia Murr

Cornelia’s Murr’s newest album began with a question: What do I want? The answer is everything, and it’s never felt more urgent.

On her first LP in six years, Run To The Center, out February 28, 2025 on 22Twenty, the London-born singer-songwriter delivers her most confident, expansive album yet. Across 10 hypnotic pop songs is a fully realized portrait of a woman and an artist in her thirties, standing triumphantly in uncertainties, asking the crucial questions one needs to sustain a life: How can you fit everything you want into a life? How can you do this if you want so much?

Run To The Center, which Murr will tour internationally next year, is her first release since her self-produced, six-track EP Corridor in 2022 and her first LP since her 2018 debut Lake Tear of the Clouds, produced by Jim James of My Morning Jacket. For years, Murr tried to make another LP, but extraneous forces kept getting in the way, whether economic or global.

But in the spring of 2023, Murr started working with prolific producer Luke Temple (Adrienne Lenker, Hand Habits), adding to her impressive list of collaborators, which includes Rodrigo Amarante, Alice Boman, Reverend Baron, and Oracle Sisters among many others. Temple was an old friend whom she had met in New York more than a decade prior. Finally, forces coalesced for them to work together. The result is a sweeping album of Murr’s most spectral and tender pop yet, born of a need to excavate her desires and experience of time, both in new songs born spontaneously out of an easy collaboration with Temple, as well as older songs that, for years, had been knocking around in her brain.

Run To the Center is the most updated expression of who Murr is now, both sonically and emotionally, particularly as questions around artmaking have become more urgent for her over the better part of the last decade.

“As a young person you’re free to wander. There’s a lot of power in that,” Murr says. “But there’s an incredible sense of urgency that has snuck up on me. All of a sudden it feels like I must define my life in some major ways. Am I going to be a mother or not? If so, who am I going to do that with? If so, where am I going to do that? How am I going to afford that? Meanwhile, this feels like the most important time to devote to my work. Life these days is seemingly asking for my commitment to what can feel like contradictory things.”

But from urgency comes purpose: Run To The Center is an explosion that sounds like an exhale: the delicate, ethereal beauty of Murr’s music is fortified by a new sonic strength, expressed in more muscular production than Murr’s last releases, including louder drums and bouncier synths.The album swirls with a sparse and hazy futurism, exploring life’s biggest questions with the assurance of someone comfortable basking in its uncertainties.

While writing the record, Murr did literally run to the center, that is, of the 48 contiguous United States, where she hunkered down in the 948-person town of Red Cloud, Nebraska while restoring an abandoned house. Music flowed out of her during this monastic period of stripping wallpaper in a derelict construction zone in the middle of nowhere. In the last place she expected, she was able to gain a vantage point of her own life and ultimately locate her own center, a grounding force that was inside of her the whole time. “Working on this old house as if it’s my body/If I take care of it it’ll take care if of me/Stripping leaves off the centuries/Maps of other worlds obscured destinies,” she sings on the title track with a delicate nerve, like tapping a champagne glass with the tine of a fork before making a toast. She may not have answers to all the big questions, but for Murr, the beauty is in being able to ask.

Murr and Temple began working together at Temple’s apartment in Pasadena, then recorded with bassist Shane McKillop and drummer Kosta Galanopoulos at a studio in Long Beach. When Murr moved to Nebraska in the summer of 2023, Temple came out to join her. She had set up a bare bones recording rig, and there they finished all the arrangements together. While Murr’s past albums, with her signature soft voice and celestial production, have been described as “dreamy,” the multilayered, revved up production of Run To The Center sounds more like waking up.

When Murr recorded Lake Tear of the Clouds, she had barely performed as a solo artist but rather had backed up other artists for years. That album marked a pivotal change in her life: the shift where she decided to focus on her own music, a shift of intention and identity. If Murr’s first album was about unveiling her own voice in music, her latest record is about exploring that commitment.

The album’s radiant, seasoned production is on particular display in lead single “How Do You Get By?”, which explores the brass tacks of life, asking real questions around the economics and the personal currencies that drive you, whether it be money, fame, or spirituality. “In the dream I asked you it seemed kinda rude/But in the light of day I’m going to/How do you get by,” Murr sings.

“I’ve found that people who seem to have wealth in one way are seeking it in another,” Murr says. “The song starts with curiosity in others, but it’s also asking yourself: What is it that sustains you? What do we need from each other?

For all her sweeping questions, Murr brings humor to her songs. “Bless Yr Lil Heart” is at once a tongue-and-cheek and earnest cry in response to our unstoppable mercurial whims and urges. “Tell me how am I ever gonna make a real life/Wanting everything at the same time,” Murr sings in a closing stanza that’s as soothing as it is cathartic. After all this time, Murr has arrived, standing fully in her power.