Girls in Hawaii - Nocturne

Armin

28.08.2017 - 18:08- Newsbeitrag


Liebe MedienpartnerInnen,

Girls In Hawaii (BEL) veröffentlichen ihr neues Album „Nocturne“ am 20. Oktober auf PIAS.

Girls In Hawaii - Video zur aktuellen Single „Walk“:


Girls In Hawaii live
12.02.18 - München, Strom
13.02.18 - Dresden, Beatpol
14.02.18 - Berlin, Bi Nuu
16.02.18 - Köln, Gebäude 9
Booking: Konzertbüro Schoneberg



Girls In Hawaii
Album „Nocturne“
VÖ am 20.10.17
Label: PIAS


INFO (engl)

In the beginning, there were two young boys with wooden guitars that sang like birds. Antoine Wielemans and Lionel Vancauwenberghe were severely bored on the school benches in their small provincial town. There must be more to life than this! So, they sketched on coasters and wrote in chords. And they discovered an innate talent for melody. Upon the release of their first album (From Here to There), a journalist wrote: "If these boys were English, they would be stars in three months." But they are Belgian. And in small countries, steps are climbed one at a time. And it’s all the better for it.

For Girls in Hawaii take the most precious of all artist’s rights: the right to take their time. It is therefore step by step their whole lives that they will document in their music. The candor of their beginnings (From Here to there, 2003). Then, entering adulthood, discouragement from the task at hand, the urge to stop or simply flee (Plan Your Escape, 2008). And finally, injustice. The death of Denis, the drummer, one evening in May. And strength as it slowly returns. That says, "You are alive! And you alone can make sense of all this "(Everest, 2013).
The advantage of being Belgian is that we have plenty of time for ourselves. Which gives the Girls the luxury of being able to question themselves, to wait for the right moment and to go to follow their ideas through to the end. And above all to give, each time, the best of themselves. And when we look at this strange journey today, we see survival in the music of these slightly backward big kids. That actually hides a group of young anguished adults from having to face the morning ahead. Real life and all that it brings. Like all of us, in reality. It is in this exact place that their music touches us. It’s a cocoon. It reassures us. And whispers to us softly: "You're not alone."

Four long years after Everest, here finally is Nocturne. The most "agile" album, the most "easy to write and get down" according to the group. An artistic flick of the wrist . Made in the style of a Jackson Pollock canvas. A record that Antoine and Lionel each wrote separately "without too many instructions". Apart from some keywords exchanged to circumscribe the subject: hypnosis, the jungle, Rousseau's naive paintings too. "Targeting the work in a pictorial way avoids infinite discussions," they explain. Unlike Everest, the fruit of a long and painful reflection necessary to any resurrection record, Nocturne almost ‘created itself’.

The group found itself with ten songs taking the same approach and having the same sensibility. Even if they can’t quite succeed in naming what brings them together. "We therefore begun to look for an image that would summarize our own words." The boys then scoured the libraries. "And quite quickly, we came across a painting by Englishman Tom Hammick, which subjugated us. It directly echoed our music, our vision of the world, what we had written without realizing: a record of childhood forever lost ... "Dark and naive at first glance, the canvas shows a man misled in threatening nature. Stuck between the elements. But the contrasts are powerful and the colors bright "And very quickly, one realizes that behind this first impression, behind the solitude and fear there are beautiful things to look at. " And so probably to live.
Nocturne. Superb title.
Superb album also, produced by Luuk Cox (already behind the controls of Everest) which imposes Girls in Hawaii a little more as an essential group. Capable of staying themselves while bifurcating though. For this time, the boys decided to move on two fronts : The texts first of all, that put aside the pain of being an adolescent ("We are not twenty anymore, we will have to assume one day") and music also , which tidies away the guitars a little in order to privilege more electronic sounds.
"It was pretty clear to us. We did not want to talk about our misadventures, our little worries, our anxieties. We wanted to stop indulging in melancholy and sadness! We had to talk about others, about our loved ones, about the world around us. Because it is what it is. And we cannot ignore it! "Since Everest, all the band members have become dads. And it inevitably changes the perspective we have on the world around us.
On this subject, three texts strike us from the first listen: Up on the Hill, Overrated and Blue Shape. Everyone will formulate their own ideas obviously, because Girls in Hawaii have a form of writing that doesn’t give up all the keys. But we can see a world terrorized by those who seem to have seen the light. Or the sad fate of those refugees whose bodies are too often found on "sublime beaches". Blue Shape is even more precise. It depicts a child, face down, small red and blue form, which had "a house and wounds to flee". We can still see that striking image. That of the lifeless body of little Aylan, 3 years old, found in the early morning on a Turkish beach. Chilling! "What is more striking than an image like this?" They comment. An emotion is born and triggers the need to make music. To use the tools at our disposal to do something about it. To transform this horror into another energy ... "
The music had evolved as well. From the woody atmospheres of yesterday, the Girls decided to continue (fans reassure yourselves, there are guitars and enthralling surges) the work started on Everest with the spotlight on machines. "It's very strange, but we are trying to detach ourselves from fabricated emotion. Paradoxically, the more one shuns emotion, the more one generates it. In any case that’s our conviction! It is the great musical revolution of the last twenty years. Technology can elevate us. It is very exciting this idea to create emotion with what appears to have none. "
So here is a disc playing with opposites. Similar but different. Desperate but bright. Fearful but courageous. Melodious but also risky. What begins with arpeggios typical of the group’s musical galaxy soon slips bit by bit into electronic tangles.
Nocturne opens with This Light, where piano and guitars form a desperate arpeggio, devoured ever so slowly by waves of synth. Before the arrival of the this phrase, recited like a mantra: "Keep your distance from this light". Fear of the day ahead. Always.
In Guinea Pig, a man looks at old pictures and wonders where his childhood smile has gone.
Then comes Cyclo that would not be denied of Radiohead at the time of Kid A / Amnesiac.
It is here that the album slips little by little towards electronic dominance. Indifference is a synthetic ballad for all of us too often tempted to see the glass half empty
Now we are at the heart of the album: Overrated that seriously raises the tone and imposes itself as an unstoppable single. And Blue Shape is the indisputable highlight: a ballad infinitely tender and poisonous. A delicate and brutal flirtatious piece that is more of a prayer than a pop song
Walk, with its eighties layers and super catchy refrain, takes the album onto lighter ground.
While Monkey imposes electronic music in minor chords, in the manner of a Thom Yorke solo effort.
It is time to return to earth. Willow Grove is classic Girls in Hawaii, an ample song with a dread filled chorus and improbable arrangements.
Finally, Up on the Hill closes the record: full of deep voices and clicks, it’s a terrified piece that plunges us back into the derailed world. Might as well throw in a little beauty. Beauty after all will never be lost.
Whatever your read on them, one thing is certain: the new songs of Girls in Hawaii will move you. Will turn you around in some way. In Nocturne, the world is, it’s true, disenchanted. But there are these strong contrasts, these bright colors. A glowing from somewhere. And when silence finally comes to mind, one thinks of the final phrase in the novel The Great Gatsby by Francis Scott Fitzgerald:
“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch our arms further . . . And one fine morning—
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

https://www.girlsinhawaii.be
https://www.facebook.com/GirlsInHawaii/

musie

04.10.2017 - 13:52

sehr schönes Album. könnte ein kleines Lieblingsalbum werden... erinnert mich zwischendurch an Kashmir.

Mr Oh so

04.10.2017 - 13:53

Ach gibt`s die auch noch?

Armin

25.10.2017 - 22:09- Newsbeitrag

Frisch rezensiert.

Meinungen?

Evident

26.10.2017 - 21:14

Nach dem ersten vorveröffentlichen Song, dachte ich, dass wird der Hammer. Das Album ist ok und auch schon mehrmals komplett durchgelaufen. An Everest kommt es jedoch nicht ran. Zum Konzert geht es trotzdem.

musie

27.10.2017 - 00:56

Genau so seh ich das auch

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