The Bernadette Maries remix their roots on dissociative single “ESO”

Of all their influences, from slowcore legends Duster to dramatic Irish rockers Fontaines D.C., perhaps the most significant catalyst for The Bernadette Maries was Sinéad O’Connor. Or, Sinéad Marie Bernadette O'Connor, as she was born, and from where the the Belgian band got the idea to name themselves The Bernadette Maries.

When vocalist and guitarist Guy Tournay calls to explain this, it’s after 10 p.m. in Brussels, and he’s coming from another press call. The following day, The Bernadette Maries would be playing a show in Antwerp. Soft, their full-length debut album, will be out 18 September via Géographie.

Though his schedule is packed now, before Tournay began playing with The Bernadette Maries, he was convinced that he would never be in a band again. He was a member of the Belgian group Animal Youth, which he calls “a clichéd kind of post-punk thing”, before quitting the band to work as a sound engineer. Collaborating with artists such as Jessica Pratt, King Dude, and Angel Olsen, Tournay was reminded of the joy that comes along with playing with other people. Through the connections he forged as an engineer, and with the time he spent with Sinéad O’Connor’s discography, thus, The Bernadette Maries was born. Since their inception in 2024, they have been touring across Belgium, France, and the Netherlands.

“ESO”, the second single released in anticipation of Soft, was at first written, together, as a conventional song. With a hooky nu-gaze-inspired riff, and bassist Daria’s vocals wailing enmeshed with Tournay’s own, until Tournay decided it was time to change things up. “I think I got bored with that song,” he says about the process of mixing the original track. “I started messing with a drum loop.”

The song's second half is essentially a remix of the first, abstracting the structure into something more delicate, more crystalline, and with a dreamlike drum and bass bent. “I didn’t expect anything,” Tournay says. “But the first reaction was 'Oh, it’s now my favorite song on the album.'” The result is a portrait of a band, poised to stumble headlong into a new frontier of alternative rock music. One that keeps its influences close to its proverbial chest, but assimilates the pressures of departure and dissociation.

Tourney reveals that “shoegaze is definitely one of the biggest influences.” But as exciting as one’s influences can be, there’s a limit to how far they carry a sound. “I don't want this album to be too monolithic,” he says. “I don’t want every song to be classic shoegaze-y stuff.”

The Bernadette Maries’ insistence on dynamism, or at least on remixing themselves when things start to get boring, unfurls into a track as tight and groovy as it is phantasmagoric. “I think of the song as a dream that never really ends,” Tournay says. “It starts from somewhere, and we’re just going up.”