Hélène Barbier

Hélène Barbier seeds melodies that ferment and blossom in the shadows, pairing hummable lines with alien tunes conjured in someone else’s psyche across time and space. Siamese fragments. She creates an imbalance through juxtaposition. Four simple notes become evocative alongside four disorienting, different notes, and this simplistic rule has become a basis for complex play. After releasing Have You Met Elliot ? in 2019 and Regulus in 2021, the France-born, Montreal-based artist will release her third album, Panorama, this fall. Enlisting musicians based on their willingness to break from tired chords, worn fills, and needless flourish, Barbier switches between English and French atop aggressively anti-complicated avant-pop melodies.