Bijou Noir Shares “Alone Together” Rework, Preps New Full-Length
Prague/Los Angeles-based electro-pop artist Bijou Noir (Augustus Watkins) is back with a dense, timely rework of their 2018 track “Alone Together”, the first teaser for an upcoming full-length.
For Bijou Noir, “alone together” was a theme long before 2020. We Are Alone Together was the title of their 2018 album, and it reflected upon themes of long winters and isolation throughout, and specifically in the title track. “February fucks us all” has been a frequent adage for Watkins, a notion that none of us get out of the cold months emotionally unscathed. Watkins had hoped to escape the bitter Prague winter in early 2020 by spending a couple months in Southern California, but soon after shifting locales the pandemic came stateside and made his stay indefinite. Positive feedback to a solo ukulele rendition of “Alone Together” he had been performing on livestreams gave Watkins the idea of re-recording the track, incorporating elements from the original while pushing it in an entirely new direction.
There have always been forces causing people to stay indoors for prolonged periods of isolation, from weather to pandemic to agoraphobia. It can sometimes be a fight between the true realization of how universal what you’re experiencing is versus the lonely part of your brain that tends to view its own loneliness as something unique to you. Bijou Noir wrestles with this on “Alone Together”, the intentional contradictory nature of the phrase mirroring the confusion and uncertainty of the present moment.
The new arrangement polishes off some of the abrasive edges from the original composition and replaces them with propulsive, melodic flourishes, anchored by Bijou Noir’s electric ukulele and catchy vocal harmonies. The winter of the 2018 version gives way to spring in its 2020 incarnation, a fitting anthem to get stuck in our heads as we await whatever lies on the other side of now.
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