We are often enchanted by the emotional sounds of Barleaux.
The former Bostonian and current Los Angeles resident caught our wandering attention a few months ago with the pop-drunk lust of “Fire,” a slow-burn track that felt like an early-morning comedown. Since then, she’s filled our earholes and VanyaRadio playlists with two covers (Bob Moses’ “Too Much Is Never Enough” and “Hello” by Adele).
Now, with her debut album w y l d d e s ! r e out this past (Black) Friday, we are excited to premiere another track of hers, the mystical, minimalist “Idle Sun.” Listen to it below via the Barleaux Soundcloud.
“‘Idle Sun’ is definitely a self-confessional account,” Barleaux tells Vanyaland. “But it’s one of the songs on my record that I brought with me on the transition from acoustic guitar singer-songwriter to a more experimental, pop electronic sound. It’s about that void that you often feel when you just can’t connect with someone because you know it won’t better your well-being, but you’re just having a hard time accepting that distance.”
Barleaux adds: “When I took it to [producer] J. Saliba, he knew just what to do with it. We used an OP-1 synthesizer to create the beat. It was the beginning of a long journey of me challenging myself to keep pushing that ‘out-of-the-box’ thinking, production-wise… I really like the warm delivery of it, the way it has a casual, demo-like ambience and a self-confessional nature. But it’s kind of a pillow-talk song — like, “listen, I miss you. I can’t do much about it, but this is where we are now.”
Here we are.