Anglo-French duo Natalie Findlay and Jules Apollinaire’s debut TTRRUUCES album is an ambitious affair. 42 minutes of cinematic pop and grand storytelling, the eleven tracks follow the tale of a Sad Girl and a Lost Boy, whose quest to acquire a new drug named TTRRUUCES takes them on a mind-altering journey. Each of the chapters will eventually each be accompanied by a video, with the project coming together to make a coming-of-age film, wherein Sadie (Sad Girl) and Syd (Lost Boy) are trying to find their way in an often bleak world. To celebrate the album’s release, the duo talk us through the album, track by track.
SAD GIRL
This was the first TTRRUUCES song ever written. It gave us the idea to write a whole concept album around this character; Sadie. She’s 17, sad and disenchanted with the world around her. she is lonely, still lives with her parents and listens to old rock’n’roll.
SENSATIONS OF COOL
This song zooms in on Sadie and how she “fell out of love with the world”. She criticizes the ways of modern life and longs to discover something real to hold on to.
THE DISCO
In this song, you discover our second character Syd during one of his countless hedonistic nights out at the local Disco.
LOST BOY
The song focuses on Lost Boy and his dysfunctional lifestyle filled with drugs and meaningless one-night stands. He too, is looking for more meaning but feels trapped by his self-destructive behaviour and bad reputation.
BAD KIDS
In the fictional world, we set our characters, there is a new drug called TTRRUUCES being haled as a way to expand your mind to see things for what they truly are. ‘Bad Kids’ are the abusers of this drug. In this track they lead Sadie and Syd to the drug, tempting them and selling its praises along the way. At the end of the song, the two characters finally find the drug and take it, applauded by the Bad Kids.
TTRRUUCES
This is when TTRRUUCES kicks in; their trip begins very violently as they get thrown into parallel distorted realities. They confront their deepest fears, and their bad trip ends in an ego-death where they are left out of their minds.
EVIL ELEPHANT
The drug has now fully kicked in, and Sadie and Syd experience an out of body experience, showing them dystopian visions of the world they live is. Ruled by greed, consumerism and elephants. It shows them the flaws of their reality. Inspired by Disney’s Dumbo, the song is a ternary, psychedelic hallucination.
STRANGER NOW FOREVER
The effects of TTRRUUCES are wearing off. As the characters come back down to reality – they haven’t slept and rediscover the world with new eyes – they feel changed. Despite them still being strangers, their experience deeply connects them. They feel good together; they belong. They go on a hazy walk. They are ready to dive into the next chapter of their lives together.
I’M ALIVE
The most joyous moment on the album, Sadie and Syd decide to ditch everything and embark on an ecstatic summer road trip. It’s the first time they both feel truly alive and free. They are now on a glorious path, experiencing a happiness they didn’t believe could exist. It feels like a rebirth for them.
SOMETHING INSIDE
This is a reflective track where the characters have reached a new level of bliss. Their bond deepens, and they fully accept and embrace each other and their runaway journey. There’s something inside, light, love, infinity, and they feel it. It grows, and at the end, their love submerged them, and their two souls merge into one.
SLEEPY HEAD
The finale, Sadie and Syd wake up in each other’s arm in a heaven-like place, we leave them on a beautiful morning of tenderness between them, where nothing else but their love matters – that happy, peaceful place that they found together called Bohemian love. It is their nirvana, they have reached a new level of consciousness where they can create together a new reality, something better than what their world had to offer. This song means a lot for us; it is probably our favourite as it has that raw emotion that can make you cry and smile at the same time. We wrote it and recorded it all during an amazing acid trip, and that was the last song we wrote, we knew this is where we had to leave our characters and finish the Opera.
The album can be experienced in a chronological journey. There is a structure behind every track, with each song revealing more details and depth of TTRRUUCES universe. The grand finale will be revealed with every music video connect to make a film of the album. “Sooner or later it will all make sense.”
STRANGER NOW FOREVER
The effects of TTRRUUCES are wearing off. As the characters come back down to reality – they haven’t slept and rediscover the world with new eyes – they feel changed. Despite them still being strangers, their experience deeply connects them. They feel good together; they belong. They go on a hazy walk. They are ready to dive into the next chapter of their lives together.
I’M ALIVE
The most joyous moment on the album, Sadie and Syd decide to ditch everything and embark on an ecstatic summer road trip. It’s the first time they both feel truly alive and free. They are now on a glorious path, experiencing a happiness they didn’t believe could exist. It feels like a rebirth for them.
SOMETHING INSIDE
This is a reflective track where the characters have reached a new level of bliss. Their bond deepens, and they fully accept and embrace each other and their runaway journey. There’s something inside, light, love, infinity, and they feel it. It grows, and at the end, their love submerged them, and their two souls merge into one.
