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Are we phasing in and out? Is there a lost and found for your memories? How long can you hold on to a dream? Wait, don’t answer. Check your mirrors. Fix your eyes on the light. We’re still searching. Check your mirrors again: They might be right.

Director Terrence Malick famously achieved the dreamlike visual quality of 1978’s Days of Heaven by shooting most of the film during “magic hour,” the time just after sunrise and just before sunset, when the sun is low in the sky and its light is warm and diffuse. The film’s resulting visual textures and tones were heightened to surreal, hallucinatory effect.

On their debut album, Montreal’s Hush achieve the aural equivalent of magic-hour cinematography: shimmering guitars, hypnotic, tape-munched drums, keyboards, and kosmische-tinged synthesizers provide an ever-shifting backdrop to stunningly harmonized vocals. Gaze upon your reflection. Look beyond it. Is the mirror right? Wait, don’t answer. We’ll get there.

Hush is the latest project from prolific Montreal musicians Paige Barlow, Miles Dupire-Gagnon, and Gabriel Lambert. Dubbed “the heir to Iggy Pop” by Radio-Canada, lead vocalist Paige Barlow left the DIY punk scene in Atlanta, GA, for the eclectic Montreal indie community in 2018, and has since been active with her own musical projects as well as collaborating with artists such as Galaxie, Solipsisme, and Hippie Hourrah. Multi-instrumentalists Miles Dupire-Gagnon and Jean-Gabriel Lambert have been collaborating for years, beginning with indie-rockmainstays Elephant Stone, their own projects Anemone and Hippie Hourrah, as well as anextensive list of collaborations with other artists, including Montreals’ legendary Besnard Lakes.

Blurring genre boundaries while weaving elements of jazz, art rock, synth-pop, Krautrock, surf, and indie rock into its psychedelic foundation, Hush keep things anchored with undeniable melodic hooks and masterful songwriting: one ear to the cosmos, one ear to the fertile ground of rock and roll. This wild balancing act of sonic experimentation and pop smarts evokes the musical equivalent of a hypnagogic state—the semi-lucid transitional time between wakefulness and sleep—where reality is warped, just out of reach; an invitation to the trio’s dream, to their hall of mirrors.

From the kaleidoscopic psych-rock opener “Phasing,” to the kinetic pop joyride of first single “The Mirrors Were Right,” the hooky guitar riff wizardry of “Sign Out,” through the intoxicating “Cardigans on LSD” whimsy of album closer “Saturnday,” Hush gift us a widescreen glimpse of an endless horizon, seen through a rearview mirror at dusk. Like Malick’s camera waiting for that fleeting glow, their songs unfold in liminal light—moments where everything feels suspended, half-real, almost holy. Sometimes crystalline, sometimes blurred, the trio venture ever onward through the dream, toward that same elusive hour. Fix your eyes on the light.

Check your mirrors again. Are they right? Almost certainly. Hush’s debut album, presented by Montreal’s Simone Records, was co-produced by Hush and René Wilson. Recording took place in part at the band’s own Phasing Fun Studio as well as Montreal’s esteemed Gamma Studios with sonic wizard Samuel Gemme (La Sécurité, Corridor, Hippie Hourrah), who also provided bass guitar. Daniel Thouin contributed additional keyboards. The album was mixed by René Wilson. Influences include Ariel Pink, Broadcast, The Velvet Underground, MGMT, Steve Lacy, The Beach Boys, Melody’s EchoChamber, David Byrne, Foxygen, Goat, and Cocteau Twins.

Contact

LABEL CANADA
Simone Records
info@simonerecords.net

RELATIONS PRESSE
Danny Payne
raisondetremedia@gmail.com