Ghostly Kisses Release New Album 'Darkroom'
Ghostly Kisses have just completed a packed tour of Europe, and will embark on their North American tour next week.
By: Josh Sharpe May. 17, 2024
Ghostly Kisses has released their sophomore album Darkroom, out now via Akira Records.
Comprised of French-Canadians Margaux Sauvé and Louis-Étienne Santais, the duo became an international sensation with the release of their debut album Heaven, Wait, garnering a cult following overseas, and sharing the stage with Ry X, Men I Trust, Lord Huron, Pomme and more. For their new record, the band launched what they’ve dubbed the "Box Of Secrets" initiative, allowing fans to anonymously reveal their deepest intimacies.
What they discovered was a global, post-pandemic, postmodern era of pain - an intense and strange loneliness felt around the world. Sauvé and her partner Santais synthesized those missives into the mesmeric Darkroom, a record that wills our inner monologue into view, an empowering ode to our collective battles.
On the release, Sauvé shares “Last year, we opened an anonymous safe space for fans to share personal stories about their lives, called The Box Of Secrets. We feel very privileged that fans chose to entrust us with their deepest secrets. We read every message, and it's become the main source of inspiration for this album. So many people at our shows would tell us that they listened to our music through heartbreak, grief, pain, questions they asked themselves, so I thought we should give others a safe space to do the same. For this project, I wanted to live in those themes, those experiences, to make it a multidimensional conversation. For example, we heard from a lot of fans from countries where they couldn’t openly love the person they were in love with, for political or social reasons. I felt that pain, identified with it in my own way, and knew many others would too.”
On the heels of a packed European tour and receiving the Biiblii Award in China for International Track of the Year, Ghostly Kisses North American tour kicks off next week. Tickets available HERE.
Tour Dates
May 23 - Montreal, QC @ Church of the Gesu
May 24 - Ottawa, ON @ Club SAW
May 25 - Quebec City, QC @ Imperial Bell
May 29 - Boston, MA @ Cafe 939
May 30 - Washington, DC @ Songbyrd
May 31 - Brooklyn, NY @ National Sawdust
June 01 - Philadelphia, PA @ World Cafe Live
June 04 - Chicago, IL @ Sleeping Village
June 05 - Minneapolis, MN @ 7th Street Entry
June 07 - Denver, CO @ Globe Hall
June 08 - Salt Lake City, UT @ Kilby Court
June 11 - Seattle, WA @ Barboza
June 12 - Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios
June 14 - San Francisco, CA @ Brick & Mortar
June 15 - Los Angeles, CA @ The Echo
Traditionally, Sauvé and Santais would each set up in a different room, sharing snippets via email and only meeting up to finalize ideas. “Writing separately ensures we’re not influenced by anything else, and we can bring more depth to our process,” Sauvé says. This time, the messages from the “Box of Secrets” provided an unusual baseline for that influence rather than just their own individual experiences, and the result refracts and shimmers kaleidoscopically. After compiling demos, Ghostly Kisses brought in new collaborators to further bolster their new electronic palette: co-producers George FitzGerald (London Grammar, as well as solo work) and Oli Bayston (Boxed In, Yune Pinku). Longtime engineer (and Santais’ cousin) Alex Ouzilleau further helped shape the work in the studio, and Gabriel Desjardins’ string arrangements add depth and drama to the proceedings. To test their boundaries even further, Ghostly Kisses tested their recordings while on tour, a new step in their process and a portal into connecting more with their music and their fans.
“We heard from a lot of fans from countries where they couldn’t openly love the person they were in love with for political or social reasons,” Sauvé says. “I felt that pain, identified with it in my own way, and knew many others would too.”
Each track of Darkroom’s magnetic run comprises its own world, with Sauvé’s vocals as the radiant arc connecting their orbits, the moments and themes shared by fans finding resonances—the whole Ghostly Kisses universe together even when expressing its loneliness. In moments, Ghostly Kisses offer an awe-inspiring hope for connection, for love, even when it seems impossible. By opening up their music to be the conduit for other people’s stories, they landed up finding their own. And by doing so through the stories of their fans and in new, more kinetic tones, Darkroom should prompt that same hope in many around the world who may otherwise have felt the darkness creeping too far in.
Ghostly Kisses have just completed a packed tour of Europe, and will embark on their North American tour next week.
Tracklist:
01 There Is No More Space
02 Keep It Real
03 Golden Eyes
04 Lonesome Hero
05 Ocean
06 Calm Down
07 On & Off
08 Silver Screen
09 Crimson
10 Within
11 Beneath The Clouds
12 Carousel
Photo credit: Fred Gervais
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