Pearl & The Oysters, the duo of Juliette Pearl Davis (Juju) and Joachim Polack (Jojo), formed a decade ago in Paris, where they lived until they were young adults. Together, they make music a lot like their current base of Los Angeles: sunny on the surface, darker and more layered at its roots. Their fizzy, squiggly lounge pop – now leaning toward ‘70s piano rock as well as Brazilian, exotica and city pop influences – asks how to live with uncertainty and disquiet.
In January 2025, as Trump’s second inauguration loomed and wildfires raged through LA. Juju stayed up all night crying. The next morning, she woke to find that Jojo had written a song for her, “Wide Awake,” a calm offering in the midst of panic. From that moment, the process of creating Monkey Mind began.
Pearl & The Oysters’ new album Monkey Mind takes its title from the Buddhist concept of a restless, looping consciousness: thoughts jumping, spiraling and rarely settling. Produced by Jonathan Rado (Weyes Blood, The Lemon Twigs, Father John Misty), the record follows that cycle across the span of a day, beginning in a state of calm before the mind wakes up, gathers speed, and eventually softens again.
Following a “primal and direct” instinct rather than retreating into long, meticulous processes, Juju and Jojo chose to work quickly, writing their sixth album in a matter of weeks. “We felt a need to tap into a certain urgency and honesty, as a result of our growing malaise with a cultural climate plagued by digital alienation and generative AI slop,” says the duo.
Using the 24-hour framework as a creative constraint, the record opens with Randy Newman-like piano, peaceful and half-asleep, before the energy shifts to the fidgety yacht rock guitar of “Mandarin Moon”, fast-paced instrumental “Shinkansen”, and the frantic ‘70s funk of “Stratford & 52” – the street the duo lived on when they first moved to LA. At the center is Juju and Jojo’s long-standing relationship: on “A Pocket Symphony,” they look back to their creative and romantic partnership, which began in high school.
Juju and Jojo’s eco-anxieties came into immediate focus as they worked on Monkey Mind. LA’s wildfires threatened not just the city but the network of friends and collaborators they had built around them. At the same time, that community, a circle of LA musicians who appear across the album, helped to ground them. The record recognizes both sides of that experience: fear of loss, and relief at not being alone.
After years of building intricate, home-recorded worlds, for their new album, Juju and Jojo wanted to open the process up and capture something less controlled. Sharing similar “musical obsessions” including Todd Rundgren, The Beach Boys, Steely Dan, and “early-tronic sonorities”, they knew Jonathan Rado would be the perfect fit. Recording to tape with minimal overdubs meant they could take a “no-demo, no-click, live-to-tape approach,” which mirrored the rawness and immediacy of the writing process. “Every day felt like summer camp,” says Juju. The environment was playful and freeing, and aside from one time when Rado’s poodles got into a stash of Kinder chocolate, the sessions “were all joy,” says Jojo.
Monkey Mind is Pearl & The Oysters’ first truly LA record. If earlier albums evoked the humidity of Gainesville, Florida, and their Stones Throw albums Coast 2 Coast and Planet Pearl cast them as nomads figuring out where to call home, Monkey Mind is firmly rooted in LA. It’s full of poolside bops, sirens in the distance, the squawks of a neighbourhood parrot, psychedelic ice-cream trucks, and helicopters overhead. Both an urgent document of its time and “kind of like a giant hug”, Monkey Mind sees Pearl & The Oysters find in pain, a punchline; in disaster, a balm; in loneliness, connection.
