Ninety Seconds To Midnight

Description

"A high school band that never stopped existing." It is with surprising modesty that Simon Beaudoux, singer and guitarist of Exsonvaldes, presents his band on the occasion of the release of their sixth album, Ninety Seconds to Midnight. Between the first rehearsals, twenty-five years ago, and today, there has been a first album, Time We Spent Together (2004), which became cult for an entire generation of indie rock fans, a partial transition to French, a real success with "L'aérotrain" (2013), tours and tours in Spain, a breakup in 2017, and a return in 2023 with Maps... This know-how, which drives the band to "always reinvent the song to make it more interesting, to chase away boredom," as Martin puts it, is not put at the service of dated music, despite the many references to the 90s. The new album is deeply rooted in its time: whether it evokes the impossibility, even by changing scenery, of escaping one's solitude ("the thirst for recognition of an anonymous person ('Are they finally talking about me?')") or the danger of hiding one's weaknesses ("Malaga"), it is all the unease of our time that Simon captures between the lines of his lyrics. "What else could we talk about?" the singer wonders. "The world is so frightening, politically, ecologically. We feel like we are living under a diffuse fear and threat." The album's title, Ninety Seconds to Midnight, is taken from the magnificent closing track "Abandoned Water Park," a perfect cross between Grandaddy and Death Cab for Cutie. It refers to the Doomsday Clock, which measures humanity's proximity to annihilation. Whether the apocalypse is imminent or not, one thing is certain: Exsonvaldes has a promising future.