Pearl and the Oysters

Published on November 1st, 2019

Sometimes, while you’re walking to the store to buy milk and smokes, fate intervenes and throws a mackerel at your head. Rude, yes, but Fate is generally correct in her assumption that an intervention was needed, because right then, when all stars spinning around your skull suddenly align, it becomes clear what you should do with your life.

One such twist of fate might have sent Pearl and the Oysters on their path to interstellar grooviness. As they explain it themselves in their official biography: “After winning a free trip to the Ostreoid Asteroid Resort (from whence came their name) on the back of a dehydrated cereal box, a joyous society of galactic gleaners began making music together under the Neptunian moniker: Pearl And The Oysters.”

The more verifiable account, given by Juliette Davis in an email to PureHoney, is that she and Joachim Pollock left France together for America more than three years ago as Pollock pursued a Ph.D. in Brazilian music. In the midst of all that, a four-piece band was formed in 2017 in the duo’s adopted college town of Gainesville.

P&TO by Fabien Polack

And after sampling the delicate ear tapas that Pearl and the Oysters are serving on the half shell, there should be no argument about their roots: They are 100 percent Neptunian mollusks making music of calcium carbonate in crystalline form. In their textural, shape-shifting dream pop, you can hear Europe, Brazil, America and other, less earthbound musical geographies. 

And just as we’ve gotten to know these travelers to the Alachua multiverse, they are leaving. “The founding duo … is moving to Los Angeles at the beginning of January,” Davis writes.

Maybe the dry air and desert of the infinite west is more conducive. Perhaps it’s time for them to return to their Ostreoid Asteroid Resort to take their final form. The bottom line is, this is your very own mackerel of destiny urging you to see these wonders before they disappear! Don’t feel too guilty about the impending move; sometimes these things happen. But go support them while you can.

Pearl and the Oysters, with the Dewars and Dirtbike, play 8pm Tuesday November 12 at Voltaire in West Palm Beach. ~ Tim Moffatt

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