GRAND PUBLIC - SENSATIONS DIVERSIONS - LISBON LUX

Indie-rock quartet Grand Public launch their album Sensations Diversions today with a music video for Clap, the seventh track on the album, which deals with the seventh art. This first ten-track full-length, produced in collaboration with Alex Crow, is dedicated, in their own words, to "the absurdity of the contemporary quest for fire" and "the ease with which people who devote themselves to it allow their minds to be softened by its symbols".

Grand Public is composed up of Alex Landry, Joé Pelletier, Mathieu Leclerc and Grégory Paquet, who played with The Stills, Molly Rankin and Alec O'Hanley before forming Alvvays. The band use their haunting, invigorating music as a Trojan horse to reflect on urban mores.

The band recorded Sensations Diversions with Alex Crow in ten days during the summer of 2023. Thanks to the speed of the recording, as well as Pascal Shefteshy's final mix, the quartet succeeded in achieving the ambitious goal they had set themselves: capturing a dynamic sound reminiscent of live performance, while allowing unrestrained vocals to shine through. "We managed to create an interesting atmosphere and narrative," explains the band. "The story is concise, clear and mysterious."

With gliding, buzzing guitars awash with unorthodox tunings and sonorities, the Montrealers are carving out a special place for themselves on today's music scene with a sparkling yet incisive approach. Grand Public's reflections on the charm and madness of the art scene and the leisure economy extend far beyond their sinuous, magnetic melodies. These are as evident on the mid-tempo track Bon Alors as they are on the busier Lisbon, Paris la Sorbonne.

If the mini-album Idéal tempo (2023) was the work on which the band found its voice, Sensations Diversions is the one on which it speaks loud and clear. The fascinating mix of guitar acrobatics, dazzling melodies and ironic reflections present on this first full-length allows us to discover Grand Public in a new, captivating light.