Mauro Pawlowski handed bandmate Stephane Misseghers his laptop one night on a dEUS tour, and gave him carte blanche to dig through his archive. It took Stephane a while as Mauro's digital archive is, as legend has it, essentially infinite. But at some point he stumbled upon something glossy and undeniable. He knew exactly who to call: Bruno Coussée, bassist and his partner in production duo Scorpio Twins.
Together they started shaping ten songs. Ten dispatches from the kaleidoscopic imagination of a man who finds wonder, desire and comedy wherever he looks.
The title track sets the tone. A Nobel Prize winner falls off his bike, gives a thumbs up, and the sun breaks through the clouds. Two people keep walking without talking, feeling fine. In recent times, where every cultural gesture seems to demand maximum volume, instant outrage or at least a decent click-through rate, Pawlowski turns that logic inside out completely, and makes it feel like a radical act. These are songs about love sneaking up on you while you're running for a bus, about sexual tension building slowly in an art gallery, about resisting the urge to declare yourself to someone until you absolutely can't anymore. About a dream where it turns out you'd rather work for the person you love than marry them. About cycling at night and singing to yourself while the rest of the world argues about the end of civilization. Small moments, ordinary feelings. In Pawlowski's hands, that's where everything worth paying attention to actually lives.
The production matches the ambition. Where his previous album ‘Eternal Sunday Drive’ was steeped in 70s warmth, Scorpio Twins have pushed the dial forward a decade. They have given the record a full 24-carat gloss: lush 80s-influenced synths, basslines, and a warmth that makes the whole thing feel both timeless and completely of its own world. Brianne Dunne, drummer for Daryl Hall & John Oates, appears on a few of the tracks, as does Pol Coussée. Bruno's cousin, a Belgian saxophonist who ended up in Toronto via London and has played alongside the likes of Barry White and Isaac Hayes. It is Pawlowski's most pop-focused work to date: the sound of an artist completely at ease with himself, finding the glamour in the unspectacular.
