Pearl & The Oysters – Planet Pearl
Juliette Pearl Davis (Juju) and Joachim Polack (Jojo) – met on their first day of high school in Paris, and have been together ever since. Their creative and romantic partnership has held strong through college and jazz school, their musicology studies at the Sorbonne, and beyond as the band moved to America. Their new album Planet Pearl is the culmination of nearly two decades of connection and collaboration.
Pearl & The Oysters’ earlier albums were rooted in a sense of place: Flowerland waded the swampy art-rock waters of Florida, and Coast 2 Coast documented L.A., with a breezy, AOR-inspired sound to match. But Planet Pearl is extra-terrestrial, written from the perspective of castaway space explorers marooned on Earth. Like Bowie’s Major Tom, they look at home from a new perspective, feeling not wonder but estrangement.
Still, no matter how melancholic or alienated they feel, Juju and Jojo always see the fun side. While Joachim was dealing with his mother’s serious illness, he wrote the album opener “Side Quest”, channeling his feelings into jazz-pop joy. “4D” came about after Juliette was diagnosed with ADHD, its lyrics reflecting her bizarro experiences of distorted time and the lifelong puzzle of understanding her “messy brain”, while “Big Time” began as a slow jam and evolved into “depressed disco”.
Pearl & The Oysters Live Dates
9/24 – San Diego, CA – House of Blues*
9/26 – Santa Ana, CA – Observatory*
9/27 – San Luis Obispo, CA – Fremont Theater*
9/28 – Oakland, CA – Fox Theater*
9/30 – Seattle, WA – Moore Theatre*
10/1 – Vancouver, BC – The Pearl*
10/2 – Portland, OR – Revolution Hall*
10/4 – Salt Lake City, UT – The Depot*
10/5 Denver, CO – Summit Music Hall*
10/8 Minneapolis, MN – First Avenue*
10/10 Chicago, IL – Salt Shed*
10/11 Cleveland, OH – The Roxy*
10/12 Toronto, ON – The Concert Hall*
10/13 Montreal, QC – La Tulipe*
10/16 – Brooklyn, NY – Elsewhere (Zone One)
10/17 – Philadelphia, PA – PhilaMOCA
10/18 – Washington D.C. – Comet Ping Pong
10/19 – Raleigh, NC – Neptunes
10/21 – Gainesville, FL – The Wooly
10/23 – Atlanta, GA – 529 Bar
10/24 – Nashville, TN – The Blue Room
10/26 – Denton, TX – Rubber Gloves
10/27 – Austin, TX – Mohawk
10/29 – Phoenix, AZ – Last Exit
11/03 – Los Angeles, CA – Echoplex
*Support for Ginger Root
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