Darkroom has the distinction of being our favorite album of the year by an artist that we’ve never actually met. The LP, which dropped May 17th, is the sophomore full-length from French-Canadian duo Ghostly Kisses (comprised of Margaux Sauvé and Louis-Étienne Santais), the follow-up to 2022’s Heaven, Wait, both of which came courtesy of Akira Records. The album’s inspiration came from the band’s self-proclaimed “Box Of Secrets” initiative, for which they encouraged fans to anonymously confess their deepest intimacies. Upon the album’s release, Sauvé explained that the experience enabled her and Santais to connect with their fans to an intense degree and recognize the pain and struggles of the human experience that so many people share across the world.
“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.”
Ghostly Kisses tested out many of the songs while on tour last year, including a US trek supporting Vancouver Sleep Clinic (with an April date at The Foundry) and a European tour opening for Men I Trust. The duo spent April (and the start of May) on a headlining tour through Europe, and Tuesday they kicked off a US headlining tour, which will be playing The Lounge at World Café Live this Saturday, June 1st. Opening the tour is Montreal electropop virtuoso KROY and we hear that the Brooklyn show tonight is just about sold out, so we would highly recommend getting your tickets and showing up early.
*Get your tickets here.