Artist: Papillon De Nuit
Title: Musetta
Genre: Avant-Garde / Gothic Rock / Deathrock / Shoegaze / Ethereal
Release Date: 26th June 2026
Label: Self Released
Album Review
Things have moved pretty fast for PAPILLON DE NUIT. 18 months they were just a nascent idea birthing its way out of the mind of chief progenitor Stephen Kennedy. It was a solo idea that has morphed into a tight coterie of exceptional artists and musicians and the singles count has neared the dozen mark. It’s as if the birthing stage, or the period leading up to it was a way, not a painful one, but a period that was hard to get going but once motion had been achieved it was bam-bam-bam with the release of singles in quick succession.
Some bands who’ve been around for longer have a much more laid-back attitude to material release, they even go for a decade before settling down to record their first long player. Not so with PAPILLON DE NUIT. There’s, how shall we say, an easy urgency to how they go about things. It also takes you by surprise, “Eh what, another one?” It’s very PRINCE-like in output frequency, in my opinion, but without the hit / miss vibes.
The new Album is called ‘Musetta’ and it’s inspired by a character in the opera ‘La Boheme’ by Giacomo Puccini. She is a fiery and independent character, there’s a very strong and stubborn streak running through all of the nine tracks here, I shall now dive into ‘Musetta’ offer you, dear reader, my impressions...
‘Jude’ is the opening track. “Is it dark or am I blind” is the opening refrain. Cut glass clear. Sorrowful and pensive about the passing of time and urgency. Poignant piano like cold water flitting down a gradient between intransigent rock. The bass feels like the heart of a sprite jumping from rock to rock and tree to tree to tree. Good start.
And then there’s ‘The Pilgrims Arc’. The drumming by Stephen Kennedy starts this track with urgent bombast as notes from piano add icy accents. It’s like a heart having a final defiant party before it finally concedes to its defeat. “I’m not going down with a whimper I tell you, do you hear?” The bass is a bit throatier on this, it’s a middle finger in stringed form. The production is bright and spectral. The verbiage is tone coloured and brilliantly descriptive, subtly CRADLE OF FILTH. “I am a season of years compacted into climbing roots, a diorama in a tombstone of greenery and poison, a sticky shift of pieces, museum in a mausoleum.”
‘Sister, Dear’ is up next and is very resonant and reverberant. A softer tone than the previous track it is. “I’m in your head so I’m not dead”. Immortality is achieved if only one person refuses to let go of memories. The track is like a horseback ride over the moors of Yorkshire neatly summed up by staccato strings, uphill down dale racing the tail winds.
Slow gravely cello opens ‘Sea Within An Ocean’, shuffled percussion and water droplet piano. Sounds from a desolate landscape. It’s SOLSTAFIR without guitars, it’s Yorkshire not Iceland, but similar smells and visions are conjured. “Darkness was not always silent”. I lie on a marshmallow as it falls through clouds but never reaching the ground, the growl of the cello surrounding the never-ending descent. The percussion staring into my upward eyes and invoking somnolence.
But I’m snapped out of my glass eyed state by crash cymbals and the start of ‘Amber’. Ukrainian words and a slithered cello mark the trail and then bulbs of crystal glass formed by a piano take up the baton. Slow and smoky, the vocal emanating from the wisps and then being swallowed. And then no smoke, the voice clear, the words plain like they are typed. I feel like I’m standing out at the beginning of a rain shower. Slow and regular the patter of water as it hits leaves and fences and mossy rocks and slowly prodding the dryness from my socks.
‘Bathsheba’ - “Cello Poem” - the Cello growls and the cello bounces like the start of a song in an opera. I can see the character centre stage, arms slightly out, eyes looking straight ahead, ferocious, then up. Then down right at the audience. The instruments are, in my opinion just devices to give clarity, importance and centre stage to the vocal musings. They do their job well, don’t get me wrong but they aren’t the focus here.
‘Ariadne’ - a high tom resonates this track into life. I did a single review of this track last year and my view is the same. It has a flurry of drums care of Jared Hardwick from the Tengu Taiko drummers, a flurry of gossamer lightness and I still feel like I’m in a cloud of whimsy and reverie. I hum and I don’t know I’m humming. The vocals are a mass of clear-cut verbiage, no straining to hear them which makes the enjoyment more pleasurable.
Megan’s tone and delivery is perfect. This section near the end is a diamond “How did I get here? My heart used to say. I have love, please, let me be!” A sneery chuckle retorts with “Don’t go into the woods (?), you’re not a poem, you’re nothing” and then a throaty soaring and joyously cathartic end. Brilliant, utterly butterly!!
‘The Future Is Ours’ commences with the now familiar slow growling cello, Stephen Kennedy’s clear tenor like vocals sashay through like jute satin rope. “I see nothing, no one, nothing but this moment” cries and sighs break through the silence. And then eerie voices exclaim “we’re not your future, you’ll already be dead.”
I just love the frankness and unfiltered-ness of it all. The mid part veers into WHITE ZOMBIE territory before moving back to sombre low growling cello. I’m in a waking dream, all things shimmer, stretch and split into a “FUTURE, FUTcha, foooochA”. Lewis Carroll? Tim Burton anyone? The end.
‘Frozen Charlotte’ brings an awesome journey to an end with another track I’ve previously reviewed. It was PAPILLON DE NUIT’s 6th single release last year and it’s as good now as it was when I first heard it. A full back of the throat bass pulses through this with a punchy drum part backed by fluttery fills. “Go wrap yourself dear child, a cloak will hide, that wondrous dress you wear, get warm inside”.
Wistful, lackadaisical and martial it goes with an almost sarcastic smirk. There’s experience and wisdom in there to be found if one cares to look. Just love the glottal bass which stepped and the cello reminds me of DAKHA BRAKHA. “And there amongst the trees, the brittle air began to freeze, her body shook and Charlotte took her final breath goodbye.”
If this album were a tombstone, an epitaph if you will it would stand tall and exclaim “I am here, know me! The body I guard was here in body but now in spirit, I salute it, you are my witness.” The album has a tone of etched stones weathering vicissitudes of time so future travellers will stumble upon the messages and wonder at the poignancy.
Seriously, there’s no bullshit here, no over production, no egoistic soloing etc that shouldn’t be here. I don’t have to trawl through umpteen effects and bounce mixes to the point where it’s a stew infused with every bloody herb and spice in the larder. Nope! This album is pure in idea and execution. The music is Informed by the land it was created in. Sheepish breezes, weathered textures and sea salt undulating into aromas of heather.
It’s not Shakespearean, it’s Byronic with its verbose painting of mind pictures. Earthy, browns and mauves with steely greys and creamy whites. Don’t forget the portentous blacks. I feel like every atom has separated into a whirling dervish of wind of centrifugal force. It dances and cavorts before I reconstitute back to my morphic whole. To update an old saying: Turn on, tune in but don’t tune out, yet...
Tracklist
01. Jude
02. The Pilgrims Arc
03. Sister, Dear
04. Sea Within An Ocean
05. Amber
06. Bathsheba
07. Ariadne
08. The Future Is Ours
09. Frozen Charlotte
Line-up
Stephen Kennedy - Music, Lyrics, Vocals, Piano And Drums
Michalina Radawska - Cello
Steve Whitefield - Guitars, Bass, Choir, Piano And Drums
Karen Amanda O’Brien - Piano And Spoken Voice
Beth Veasey - Drums And Bass
Special Guests
Monica Wolfe - Poetry And Reading
The Exceptional Mr Hyde - Speaking ‘The Pilgrims Arc’
Megan Richardson - Vocals ‘Ariadne’
Jared Hardwick - Tengu Taiko Drumming ‘Ariadne’
Dominique Renard - Bass ‘Ariadne’
Rob Pearson - Drums ‘Ariadne’
Lacy Richardson - Speaking ‘The Future Is Ours’
Steve Whitfield (The Cure/The Mission) - Production & Co Writing
Pete Maher - Mastering
Recorded At Young Thugs, York, England
Website
https://papillondenuit.bandcamp.com/
Cover Picture
Rating
Music: 9
Sound: 9
Total: 9 / 10
