Pi Ja Ma - Nice to Meet U (2019)

You might know that Pauline de Tarragon was born in Avignon barely two decades ago. You might even be familiar with her natural gift for illustration and music...her magnetic aura... her crystal smooth vocals... and how this medley of talents led her to onscreen audiences (Nouvelle Star 2014) and readers (Le Cri de Zabou). Now discover (if you don't know) how she created the musical, visual world of Pi Ja Ma.

We could go into her obsession with bands like The Doors and Jefferson Airplane, but Pi Ja Ma's bewitching musical landscapes have composer and multi instrumentalist Axel Concato to thank. The melodies he composes for Pauline's vocals are tinged with an almost naive freshness which belies his solid experience, from Axel and The Farmers to My Bee's Garden - ex-Melody's Echo Chamber. Since meeting in 2015, their creative exchange... or joke slinging... has been never ending.

When you're comfortable with someone, the magic happens: Axel composes, tinkers and structures, while Pauline sings, laughs and draws as the mood takes her. As Pi Ja Ma, she recorded her first EP with Axel in 2016, aptly titled 'Radio Girl EP', which made a great impression in France, UK and on American college radio stations.

Since then, they've toured France and the UK and found their onstage musicians along the way: Clémence Lasme on bass and Carol Teillard d'Eyry on drums. Sometimes it's just the two of them, for example supporting Superorganism who snapped up the duo for their UK tour.

Songs from their first album Nice To Meet U were recorded in London, Rouen and Paris - composed and produced by Axel, often written in tandem with Pauline. But you'll know this already if you watched the first episode of the Pi Ja Ma Show on YouTube, called 'Draw my life' and directed by... Pauline of course. The album was then mixed in Paris by Antoine Gaillet and mastered by Chab.

Listening to Nice to Meet U evokes all the artists that have inspired Pi Ja Ma, floating by like clouds in a holiday sky: the Ronettes, the Beach Boys, Shocking Blue, Françoise Hardy...and modern contemporaries such as Broadcast and Stereolab. Nice To Meet U is a pop record, radically pop in its delicateness, its melodic twists, its slightly lush arrangements and its solar energy. It's a flurry of indie pop, alt rock and electro pop songs, sucked through a 60s straw. Bold but breezy tracks that feign innocence and are always intense, with the humour, grace and dream-like vibe to tackle sensitive subjects, from alienation and disappointing love stories to young girls' place in society and celebrity.
Vocals as fresh and warm as bracing wind, rhythms as sparkling as champagne, romantic ballads (By The River, You and I), dance floor hits (Pixies, Sylphs and Fairies, Ponytail, Radio Girl) and tropical safaris (Sugar Sugar), Pi Ja Ma's songs are evolving fantasies, intense daydreams where we lay back and step back in time to the 60s: between memory and possibility, as if between love affairs.