Léo La Nuit - Le Don Des Larmes

Avant-leaning Dutch imprint Knekelhuis deliver one of their more pop-orientated approaches with the debut album by Franco-Algerian songwriter, Léo La Nuit. 'Pop' remains a relative assessment, but that the label themselves have likened the project to Warpaint (a big indie band I'd - wrongly - assumed wouldn't even register on their radar) tells you a little about how they think Le Don Des Larmes should be positioned. It's not a connection I would have made myself, the interlacing of field recordings, baby/nursing sounds (the record was made during La Nuit's pregnancy) and intimate, home recorded voice and guitar perhaps a little too left-of-centre to scan in the same way, though the immediately accessible melodies and amniotic glaze are very much dreampop-adjacent in ways that feel very much of the moment. Fans of the recent Joanne Robertson, Soccer Committee and Any LPs might discover some connecting lines, especially on album highlight 'La Mer Pleure', an ethereal post-grunge lullaby that reveals the kind of inviting dark night of the soul melancholy that seems eternal in its necessity. 
 
FFO: Joanne Robertson, Soccer Committe, Any, Annelies Monsere