Listen: Bye Parula – ‘I don’t know’

Montreal trio Bye Parula share their sparkling, dancefloor-ready new single ‘I don’t know,’ the second from their new album Something Out Of Nothing, out June 5. The song is thematically linked to lead single ‘KISSBURN,’ another undeniable earworm.

About the pair, singer/bassist Loïc Calatayud-Sola shares: “These were written in the same period, at the beginning of the process, and they go together. ‘KISSBURN’ is told from the point of view of someone pursuing someone they’re obsessed with. They’re confident—maybe sexy, maybe ridiculous, maybe both. ‘I don’t know’ is from the other person’s point of view. They find the attention a little ridiculous—but they’re just as obsessed in return.”

Produced by Robbie Kuster (Patrick Watson) and mixed by Warren Spicer (Plants and Animals), Something Out Of Nothing features a team of collaborators alongside Loïc Calatayud-Sola, guitarist Sebastián Riquelme, and drummer Sergio D’Isanto – including Inuk singer/songwriter Elisapie, Bibi Club’s Adèle Trottier-Rivard, Morgan Moore and Karkwa keyboardist François Lafontaine.

While most bands form out of friendships, in this case, the friendships in Bye Parula formed through the band. When the members first met at the dawn of the decade, the only thing they really had in common was the fact that they were all strangers in a strange town: Loïc Calatayud-Sola was a recent arrival from southern France; Sebastián Riquelme hailed from Chile; and Sergio D’Isanto had immigrated from Italy. During the first wave of lockdowns, the band essentially existed as a demo file-swap exercise, but once restrictions were lifted to allow for a rehearsal retreat to a studio near Trois-Rivières, a common language was quickly forged among the trio. From there, Bye Parula cultivated an ornate art-pop aesthetic that followed in the footsteps of Montreal eccentrics like Watson or Plants and Animals, and it wasn’t long before those inspirations became peers in Kuster and Spicer, who helped this trio of immigrants find their footing in the local scene in addition to working on I.

The album’s pleasure-seeking sounds can’t obscure the distress lurking under the surface—this is a record that massages your shoulders musically while punching you in the gut lyrically.  “English is not my first language, so on our first record, I was shy, and I was trying to over-complicate stuff, to feel intelligent in a way,” Calatayud says. “And Robbie encouraged me to be simpler and just go for the emotion. I think it helped me a lot: to know that I can just write simple lyrics that are really honest.” Naturally, Something Out of Nothing’s most dramatic moments are also the most nakedly personal: on ‘Orange Blossom’ (featuring guest vocals from Adèle Trottier-Rivard), Loïc Calatayud-Sola pays tribute to his great-grandmother, who lived to 101 and whose spirit of perseverance continues to guide him through his own darkest hours—like the one chronicled on ‘Burning Down the House,’ a visceral and heartbreaking post-breakup elegy. Meanwhile, the eerie -meets-Future Islands atmosphere atmosphere of ‘Home’ draws us into the moment where Calatayud’s soul-crushing morning commute to his day job—a total of 1.5 hours on the Metro combined with an hour of walking, to be exact—led to a full-blown existential crisis, as a creeping homesickness had him questioning whether he wanted to stay in Canada.

Something Out of Nothing is divided into two parts for the listener’s experience: ‘Songs to Listen to in a Standing Position’ and ‘Songs to Listen to in a Sitting Position’. Two atmospheres that seem diametrically opposed yet are ultimately and intimately connected. Whether racing through the night or settling into dawn’s light, each track is woven from the same thread: love made alive by care. In this way, the album unfolds as a complete story. Its standing-position songs celebrate how love moves us, while its sitting-position songs reveal how love holds us. Together, they remind us of the necessity of both movement and stillness, of brightness and depth embracing the joy that lifts us and the pain that grounds us. Urging us to dance. Urging us to pause.

Stream / download ‘I don’t know’ here.
Pre-order / pre-save Something Out Of Nothing here.