Nouvel album "CAVALCADES" disponible aujourd'hui 🤍
Bandit Bandit lights the fuse once again. Two years after their debut album, the most sulphurous duo in French rock returns with “Cavalcades – Ce que la nuit ne dit pas”. A record that’s more direct, catchier, and impressively controlled.
First warning shot: “Pas le Temps”, a combative single driven by screaming guitars and a nervous flow. Beneath the rock explosion lies an eighties pulse in the vein of Étienne Daho — elegant and venomous. The female voice takes aim at these so-called “deconstructed” men who are still quick to box women into bourgeois codes: “I don’t need a man, I don’t need anything!” The slap is chic, but it leaves a mark. That’s Bandit Bandit’s signature: the tension between desire and defiance, between caress and bite.
The band was born out of a feverish connection between Maëva Nicolas (vocals) and Hugo Herleman (guitar, keyboards, compositions). It started as a Tinder hookup that later turned into a loud, passionate love story. She’s 20, he’s 24. Their nights are filled with excess and long conversations. Together, they dream of a new balance between stoner rock and French chanson. In 2019, the two lovers take the leap and form Bandit Bandit.
After two acclaimed EPs, the duo catches the attention of Azzedine Djelil, who signs them to his label Backdoor Records. Their first album, 11:11, opens the doors to radio, television, and festivals. But behind the scenes, the relationship starts to crack. “We split up by mutual agreement… well, mostly she agreed,” Hugo jokes. The tour turns into an emotional rollercoaster, swinging between onstage euphoria, breakdowns, and explosive arguments.
Barely back home, it’s time to think about what’s next. The two exes meet again at Hugo’s place in Lyon to work on demos — this time as friends. The wounds have healed, resentments have faded with time and other arms. More importantly, the distance allows them to rebuild a new creative dialogue, each bringing fresh obsessions. Hugo, a lifelong disciple of Nirvana and Queens of the Stone Age, dives back into 90s–2000s rock (from Pixies to Smashing Pumpkins) and gets hooked on newer acts like Wet Leg and The Last Dinner Party. Maëva, meanwhile, gravitates toward St. Vincent and the luminous melancholy of Quebec artist Lou-Adriane Cassidy.
But to move forward, Bandit Bandit needs a change of air — and method. The band accepts an invitation from Lionnel Buzac (Gaëtan Roussel, Izïa, Chien Noir, Saint Graal), who hosts them in a studio set up at the back of his garden in the South-West of France. The songs come together in a frenzy. Ideas fly between the three musicians. Six tracks are co-written with the former Soma member. The album is then produced by Azzedine Djelil at Backdoor Studio, before being mastered by Matt Colton (Arctic Monkeys, Fontaines D.C., etc.).
The result: “Cavalcades – Ce que la nuit ne dit pas” stands as a powerful coming-of-age record born from a turbulent decade. “From my 20s to my 30s, so much has happened,” Maëva explains. “Those ten years were made of bursts of joy and deep depressions. I grew up. I became a woman. I had to learn how to live without Hugo. Now I feel an almost vital need to understand who I am — as a woman and as an artist.”
The band’s writing has never been so direct and poetic — so intimate and political. Take “Opaline”, a nearly pop-soft track carried by a Sébastien Tellier-style piano, where Maëva tackles a subject as painful as it is rarely addressed in song: abortion. An experience she went through physically, and chose to tell with disarming honesty. Overflowing with emotion, words, and secrets, the singer extends the album with a collection of poems, some of which echo the songs.
Balancing saturated scratches and melodic caresses, Bandit Bandit fully embraces contrast. From the massive guitars of “Rien Attendre”, which opens the album like a blazing gateway, to “Joli Voyage”, where the band indulges in a boogie trip in the style of The Black Keys. “Message pour O.” sounds like Elli & Jacno caught in an electric storm. Further on, the stoner track “Idole” questions our loyalties: what do we do with yesterday’s icons? And then there’s “Seulement cette fois”, a haunting song about emotional dependency, with a guitar that clings to the voice like skin you can’t let go of (“Just this once / I won’t follow you / You’ve had me a hundred times wrapped around your fingers”). A potential hit that could propel the duo into another dimension.
The end of Hugo and Maëva’s love story deserved a requiem. The album’s final track, “Pour toi”, is a breakup song where folk and electric guitars intertwine one last time. “I believe one day we’ll meet again,” Maëva sings, her voice cracked but standing strong. No doubt about it — these two have found each other again. Somewhere else, in another way, but still together.
