HYPHEN HYPHEN + ELIA ROSE

Hyphen Hyphen

C’est La Vie.

Four years have passed since Hyphen Hyphen’s second album, a brilliant HH that the band composed and produced entirely themselves. Four years that seem to have been spent on board a rollercoaster car, as the trio went from a fantastic sold-out tour (nearly 200 dates in two years) to a health crisis and house arrest. For a band that has long built its reputation on stage and spent weeks on the road, the return home could have been fatal. But in the end, the opposite happened: forced into isolation, the band managed to turn the successive confinements into an opportunity to return to what has held them together for over ten years: a sincere love for music, playing and songwriting.

“We recorded the previous album with the desire to prove to ourselves that we were producers. For this one, it was about proving to ourselves that we were musicians. Everything was recorded live in the studio. We really wanted to rediscover the soul of a band. With nostalgia but without being backward-looking, the trio delved into the discography of bands and artists from the 70s, from Fleetwood Mac to America to Bruce Springsteen. Then they set about writing the third chapter of their discography, which they called C’est La Vie, and for which they chose to slow down and take their time.

On the one hand, he chose to go back and forth between the ICP studios in Brussels (where Hyphen Hyphen had made his first record) and his personal studio in the 19th arrondissement, which he had set up in a DIY way during the first confinement. Then, they worked on their writing, thanks to their meeting with Glen Ballard, with whom the trio now co-wrote two tracks. Collaborator of Alanis Morissette, Katy Perry or Michael Jackson, the American, whose CV shows a nice collection of Grammys, played a decisive role in this new episode.

“Glen was working on music for series and films and was living in Paris at the time. Our meeting was a milestone. He showed us how he wrote and then invited us to be more simple, more direct in expressing our emotions. It may have been the first time we let someone into our trio, but it was very fluid. Other guests joined the adventure, such as mixers Mark “Spike” Stent (Ed Sheeran, Lady Gaga, Beyoncé…) and Dan Grech (Lana del Rey, Moby…), each signing their first mission for a French artist. Rich with this golden cast, this third album is also Hyphen Hyphen’s most personal one, and he admits that he found in his composition a way to overcome the personal earthquakes he experienced these last years.

We find again the impeccable songwriting of the band, able to carve out melodic gems that sound like immediate classics, like the irresistible first single Don’t Wait for Me, rightly co-written with Glen Ballard. We also rediscover Santa’s acrobatic voice, more naked than ever (Call My Name or Symphony, where she stands out as a distant cousin of Kate Bush). Renewing their live energy (Too Young, Help Yourself), the group has put together a great album of sensitive, danceable, melancholic and hedonistic pop: they learn to live with their ghosts (Help Yourself), resurrect their first punk loves (Lie!), invite us to let go (Own God) or to accept our flaws and weirdnesses (Cry Cry Cry).

Borrowing always from humour (Voices in my Head), he excels in the art of making intimate texts striking for everyone. “For this album, we wanted to go towards a universal music, which we can defend abroad. That’s how we’ve worked since the beginning: we try to get closer to our dream, step by step. Our guideline is the will to conquer. Today, the group is about to conquer the West.

Having already played a handful of concerts in Europe, Hyphen Hyphen is now preparing to move on to the next stage. Next autumn, the trio will head across the Atlantic to seduce the American public. The new album and its collection of unstoppable songs should make this mission easier.