Bye Parula share new record, “Something Out Of Nothing”

You know that feeling when you’re looking out the window of some piece of public transit. And the window is fuzzy from years of being scratched by rings, bags, hair clips, etc. And you watch the hazy image of the city or the town or the field go by. And you can’t quite make out some small detail that you’re trying so hard to discern. It feels like you’re stuck in some place where your senses don’t work quite right. There’s a song playing in your headphones or on the car speaker. This song is ethereal and at times confusing. Take most any track from Bye Parula’s new album Something Out of Nothing and it would blend seamlessly into that tableau.

Each song asks a new question of the musicians and challenges them to bring something as of yet unheard to the record. Loïc Calatayud-Sola’s voice changes song to song and sometimes even the language he’s singing in shifts from English to French and back again. His falsetto lends a ton of bounce to the earlier songs on the track list and gives the impression that the album will be upbeat and dancey, but when he switches down to his lower tenor, the music drops in tempo as well. The synths in the more high-energy first half of the album create incredible sonic landscapes for the rest of the band to play in. Again leaning towards the first five or so songs on the album, the bass lines are funky, full-bodied, and they offer the percussionist a higher ranged selection of instruments to bang and hit. Likewise, the guitar riffs, with accompanying face-melting effects, rock the A side of the LP. 

You know that feeling when you’re looking out the window of some piece of public transit. And the window is stained purple from the ink of the night. And you stare so hard into the darkness, so you don’t accidentally just stare at your reflection in the window. That moment is better suited for a needle drop from the latter half of Something Out of Nothing. The final five songs on the album carry over some of the strength of the first half, but instead of centring their sound around the funk of their rhythm section and the soundscapes of their synths, they centre the music around an acoustic guitar and Loïc’s voice. At times Loïc soars, carrying the song with his voice alone. In “Quand vient le soir” he does his best Bryan Ferry impression to fantastic results. 

The weakness of the album comes in its fragmentation. The two halves of the album feel so distinct from each other that they seem like they could each have had their own TLC and then each become an album of their own. Despite the polarised track-list, the album is musically strong and stands tall as an example of the talent and range these musicians have. Looking towards their next album, I am excited to hear the cohesion that comes with shared history. Bye Parula have shown that they are seriously talented, even if their vision isn’t totally in focus yet.