Download from Bandcamp

NOTE TO FANS OUTSIDE OF THE UK:
THIS ALBUM IS BEING RELEASED GLOBALLY. PURCHASES FROM THIS STORE SHIP FROM THE UK AND TO AVOID EXPENSIVE SHIPPING COSTS WE RECOMMEND YOU CHECK WITH YOUR LOCAL RECORD SHOPS FIRST.


NOTE TO FANS IN FRANCE: AS ABOVE: the FNAC link is probably best since this allows you to find your local indie record store stockist: https://www.fnac.com/a19067481/Halo-Maud-Celebrate-Vinyle-album


Here comes something,

It's a record, it's called Celebrate and it lives up to its name.

It's the second album by Halo Maud.

The memorable first outing Je suis une île appeared on Heavenly Recordings. Its serpentine, virtuoso dream-pop warmed our cockles and began to impose its creator on the Ouija board of modern pop that is international, adventurous and unifying. Ideally supported by a large, flexible band/group, Maud sang intriguing melodies scribbled in real-world languages, psychedelic escalators piercing thick mists of electricity.

Less introspective, Celebrate carries this on, opens it up wide, radicalizes it and makes it jump up even higher. And so it begins, with the tip of the tongue, for 25 seconds, before the sound, suddenly massive, licks around the edges of the speaker in a droning riff: this is the first exhilarating lift-off on a record that delivers plenty, placed end to end. In twelve steep, superbly produced songs (between Paris and Los Angeles in assorted company), by the melding of contrary moods and multigrain collisions, Celebrate pulls off the tour de force of being at once meditative, hectic, yet perfectly coherent. Halo Maud has this talent (it should be said) of making welcome (read: irresistibly bold) links between hirsute pop, colorful rock, avant-garde, and sumptuous easy listening. Between racket and lullaby, Deerhoof, whose afterburner Greg Saunier here co-produces several tracks, and Françoise Hardy. Between two laboratory operators Kevin Parker and Flavien Berger, the latest taking to the mic for an amazing for an amazing cover of Iceberg, Fred Frith's blissful Anthropocene hymn.

There's more: guitar played like Monkian piano, the chorus that hits the spot, the turbulent synths and the mystery of Bulgarian voices (check out the accentuated "eeees" in the high notes; note the title Pesnopoika), the anxieties, the great joys. All with a reverb regulated like a dawn that enlarges space, that sheds light.

Halo Maud writes songs that touch, that grab hold, that astonish, that excite. And in two languages, introspective French and projectile English, which call and respond, which augment each other, endowing each song with two complementary hearts: one centripetal for soliloquy and solitary reverie, the other centrifugal for skill, friendship and fighting. Two languages as clear as can be, with counted words, with tiny steps, two languages that can tell the tale of a stream, a sisterly celebration, worldly patience, the intoxication of dancing.

The literature of Halo Maud can all be summed up in a few slogans, pop formulae and spiritual reflections that she hums, whistles or spits out into the air. While her voice turns constantly in her river melodies, the current carries behind her branches that scratch, stones, large animals.

Tumultuous, generous, Celebrate, in its shaman's shroud of ecstatic pop, of rock played flat-out and back-to-front, mischievous or meditative, is a collection of festive prayers.

What if Celebrate were a gospel record after all?

Music Maker
🔅🔅🔅

New album
« Celebrate »
out now !
💐💐💐

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