Pomme

Now thirty, Pomme takes sole creative control of her music for the first time on her fifth album, after having co-produced her previous records alongside Waxx, Albin de la Simone and Flavien Berger. She remains accompanied on stage and in the studio by the musicians she shares a close creative chemistry with: Michelle Blades, Pauline Denize, Zoé Hochberg and Corentin Ollivier.

The title la forteresse had lived with her for years, an image that is both protective and confining. The metaphor deepened during her research for Peau d'homme, the film adaptation of Hubert and Zanzim's graphic novel, in which she plays Blanche, a young woman who disguises herself as a man. While working on this film, for which she also contributed songs to the soundtrack arranged by Bryce Dessner (The National), she kept two parallel journals: her own, and that of her character.

Genesis and places of creation Unlike her earlier albums (failles, an exploration of hypersensitivity, and consolation, which drew on guiding female figures), la forteresse took shape gradually and across continents: on tour, during a residency at Kyoto's Villa Kujoyama, in sessions at Aaron Dessner's studio in upstate New York, and over several productive days at Château de la Haute-Borde in France, an artist residency run entirely by women.

Narrative structure The record unfolds in four chapters: childhood, love and trauma, crossing the wall, and finally emerging on the other side, into the present. These are narrated through the lens of a fictional half-human, half-bat creature, taken in by humans long ago and confined for centuries within a fortress, until she decides to break through its walls. Her nature is left deliberately ambiguous, so listeners can project their own experience onto her.

Influences Pomme immersed herself in medieval imagery, illuminated manuscripts and mythology, the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch, the musicals of Jacques Demy and Michel Legrand, the live performances of La Horde and Peeping Tom, and the dreamlike cinema of Hayao Miyazaki. Musically, she cites influences as varied as Björk's Vespertine, Sufjan Stevens' Carrie & Lowell, Feist's Pleasure and Kate Bush's Never for Ever — records united by artists fully devoted to ambitious, expansive work that still speaks to everyone.

Sound and recording True to her style, Pomme never opposes the organic to the synthetic, or restraint to lyricism. Songs like "catherine" or "sans nous" are rooted in pure folk (the album was long imagined as a simple piano-and-voice record), while others open into lush orchestral arrangements. Live recording remained central throughout, with the musicians performing together in the same room at Studios de la Fabrique in the south of France, a studio that has also welcomed Nick Cave, Arthur H and Radiohead.

Themes Pomme addresses personal and societal subjects without filter: "ça fait dix ans" confronts the violence she experienced early in the music industry; "seule dans la foule" explores the loneliness of the perpetual outsider; "trou noir" captures the exhaustion behind constant activity; "trente" reflects on turning thirty; "lumière bleue" imagines a future shaped by the climate crisis; and "un château dans les bois" questions contemporary models of love.