Pledge Of Healing
Origin: France
Genre: Progressive Art Rock
Influences from: Massive Attack, Anathema, The Gathering, Radiohead
Side Fact: The band consists of two members, but is supported on stage by four long-term friends.
Sometimes you don’t have the right means of expression to make exactly the right statements. At this point it was Cyril Delvallezwhen he was about two years ago Claire Sergue met and realized that she had exactly the right voice to express his emotions captured in music. At the same time, she could simply let herself be carried away by the music he had written. That was the birth of Pledge of Healing.
The mix of male mastermind and female forms of expression have been the guarantee for many musical recipes. There are of course Pure Reason Revolution or Portishead. These should probably also serve as a model for Pledge of Healing with their mix of progressive rock and trip hop elements. Your first album One Step Closerreleased in January 2023, was a respectable success and can serve both with musical substance and with a voice that gets under your skin.
The nine songs mostly deal with everyday topics. They are about friendships like in the opener A Friend For Bad Times or about yourself and your place in the world as in The Universe Responds to find. But it’s also about pure self-doubt as in Hopes And Dreamsthat you HERE can hear or Rain To Light Up The They aren, that her HERE can hear and, with an almost intimate atmosphere, reminds you that the sun hides behind the clouds and that even the darkest hour only lasts sixty minutes.
Gets under your skin
The duo impresses with incredibly rich melodies and sometimes hopeful, but also melancholic and always tenderly melting singing, which will certainly make one or two hearts beat faster. Their debut is convincing across the board and makes the future path of the two Frenchmen look quite rosy.
One Step Closer is the soundtrack to a film that unfolds in one’s own head, which does not leave the listener alone, but rather gives them a hand and offers guidance through all kinds of life crises. Despite all the heavy topics, that’s an important reason to like this album a lot. The trip hop elements appear quite rarely and are somewhat lost in the rest of the progressive art rock events. So stays One Step Closer the debut of a promising and ambitious art rock combo.
Line Up
Cyril Delvallez – guitars, keyboards, programming, bass, backing vocals
Claire Sergue – vocals, background vocals
Links
Facebook Pledge Of Healing
Webseite Pledge Of Healing
Also on Soundmagnet.eu
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