Vicky Farewell

Pearl & the Oysters, international adventurers in eclectic pop, crash-landed their starship in Los Angeles in the year 2020. Born and schooled in Paris, the couple launched a nomadic romance fueled by music that would later see them crooning in New York jazz clubs, then wading the swampy waters of American DIY art rock in Gainesville, Florida. Today in L.A., the band’s evolving sound complements a buoyant moment in a scene where their brand of space age jazz-pop is more than welcome. Juliette Pearl Davis and Joachim Polack met on the first day of high school in Paris – bespectacled Juju and curly-haired Jojo, both music-obsessed, nerdy, and drawn together by a “poetic connection” and mutual heroes unusual for high schoolers, like Burt Bacharach, Kurt Weill and especially, Antônio Carlos Jobim. “It’s very French of us to be into Brazil, but like, 1960s-French,” said Joachim. “When we were kids, it wasn’t that cool.” At college, pursuing musicology degrees at the Sorbonne, a romantic connection emerged. Today, Juliette and Joachim’s shared journey as love partners and music-makers gifts listeners with a rare experience in pop music – the output of a near-telepathic musical language grown over decades of 24/7 connection and collaboration. But back in school, each struggled for the respect of their academic music mentors. Of Joachim, Juliette said “You were studying classical composition in the conservatory where Debussy and Ravel were schooled. And the teachers wouldn’t understand why you would do pop music on the side.” But the “eternal schoolboy,” as Joachim self-describes, dedicated years to the study of his hero Jobim, the eventual subject of a PhD dissertation at the University of Florida. Joachim’s Jobim, MPB and Tropicália, analog synths, Juliette’s love for jazz, Blossom Dearie and the Great American Songbook, and the pair’s shared delight in global pop fusion groups like Yellow Magic Orchestra alchemized into the kaleidoscopic world-building sound of Pearl & the Oysters, first unleashed on their self-titled 2017 debut. Later, the band caught the ears of Peanut Butter Wolf’s label Stones Throw, who signed and released 2023’s effervescent and ornate Coast 2 Coast. For the band’s second LP on Stones Throw, Juju and Jojo welcome the familiar fans climbing aboard the Oysters’ signature rocket ride to paradise. Planet Pearl, true to form, is a hypnotic vision-quest conjuring moonlight, tropical waters, exotic botany and buzzing things in flight. But it isn’t all bubbles and fizz in Oysterville. Having always played imaginatively with the personae of crash-landed aliens, on Planet Pearl our voyaging strangers sing to the alienation of a journey closer to reality – navigating the daunting environs of Los Angeles, the digital age of creation-as-content, and the rootlessness of long cross-continental tours with their 5-piece band. For all its lush loveliness and the pure ASMR pleasure of its textures in headphones, Planet Pearl represents a more bittersweet, reflective journey for the Oysters’ canon to date. On their 5th full-length album, the band feels sufficiently introduced; they’re ready for another level of intimacy – truthier conversations. An attentive listener does well to connect with darker whispers in some of the band’s most outwardly charming songs. With an evolved depth of intimacy, and an unflagging zeal for experiment and play, the experience of Planet Pearl heralds a brave and prolific future for our restless voyagers.