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FFIt's a fact: Balladur have aged and are no longer the crazy pop irruption born of the French noise era that struck everyone in the mid-'10s, no: the duo have been around, playing in every pit in the land, criss-crossing every country road, for better or for worse.

While the two daredevils still speak the language of beautiful songs. and globalised borrowings, we've never heard an album from them as ‘doom’ as the one they're releasing today. The 9 tracks on Pourquoi certains arbres sont si grands are haunted by the nostalgia of hopes and happy days, and a very unique taste of "It-is-what-it-is". Is it that 70s Italian passion? Is it the staggering frontality of the text? The obsessive taste for chiaroscuro? The omnipresence of demonic synths in the background?

What's curious is that it was as a ‘Cold Wave band’ that Balladur emerged in 2013. And now, 10 years later, having shaken off all the pre-packaged labels, they've delivered their hardest record yet, one that's both inhabited and earth-shattering.

The Balladur duo will be accompanied by another duo, Grave Erreur.. Grave Erreur is,  according to them, "two guys who have a fuzz pedal instead of a brain [and who] have found nothing better than a 90s drum machine to make you dance. By the way, is it a dance or a funeral march? In short, it's a post-whatsit-whatsit-punk project and there's more energy than Ian Curtis (since he's dead and they're still alive for now".

Discover Balladur's last album here: