The loyal partner of our melancholic nights of introspection is back. The bitter-sweet dreamy atmosphere emanating from Julien Pras’ music draws its inspiration from an English literature spangled with fantasy. While his chords describe a necessary escape, his airy vocals seem to take refuge in a cocoon of spleen.
A discreet and genuine figure of the Bordeaux indie-pop scene, Julien Pras won renown for officiating in bands such as Pull, Calc or Victory Hall. He is today the singer and guitarist in the Heavy Rock trio Mars Red Sky.
As for his career as a solo artist, it began in 2010 with the release of his very first album, Southern Kind Of Slang. Like many of the most talented North American songwriters - such as Elliott Smith, Sean Lennon or Brian Wilson - his album features finely-crafted songs, in which sadness is enhanced by touching ballads and subtle musical arrangements.
Wrapped in languor and mystery, Shady Hollow Circus is released three years later. It was named after the neighbourhood where he lived during his childhood in the States, a place which remains for him a comforting link to his own psych folk universe.
The album Wintershed came about in Winter, while the heating was out of order and the cold was forcing the guitarist to take numerous breaks in order to warm up his fingers. With Leonard Brémond, Julien Pras built an organic, natural and pure musical body : « we deliberately left the surrounding accidental noises from the room, the natural resonances or other types of sounds in the record. We didn’t want something too clean or too sterilised. »
As a guest on most of the songs, Helen Ferguson - who was already singing backup vocals on Shady Hollow Circus - lent her crystal clear voice to the project. She can be heard on « Horses In Disguise » recorded face to face, the two voices being captured simultaneously.
Between two recording sessions with Leonard Brémond, Julien Pras polished his musical arrangements. The choral parts in « Charles House Infirmary » and « Shallow Grooves » are the result of an intimist work, performed in the artist’s own studio. This is how he chose to add a piano part and choruses on « Hired Mourners ».
The name of the album, Wintershed, is the pertinent contraction of the words « winter » and « shed », referring to the idea of the shelter. But it can also be seen as a diversion to the existing « watershed » : the turning point. Resounding overview of Julien Pras’ poetical potential, the name of this third album unveils a more personal note, somehow containing his strange artistic schizophrenia. The artwork designed by Ita Duclair precisely evokes this ambivalence of the marvellous opposed to cruelty, this magnificence of the paradoxe.
In this album, he seems serene, expressing with generosity his great love for folk music and musical arrangements, as well as his passion for vocal harmonies, which he’s had since he started to decipher the secrets in the songs of the Beach Boys at school !
While some songwriters are looking into the rear-view mirror, Julien Pras seems to be looking into an almost intact outlandish and baroque mirror.
