Pauline gently arrives with a dream-like melody that, for me, invokes Sofia Coppola flicks and shoegaze. Sunnbrella claim their inspiration is actually Éric Rohmer’s 1983 movie Pauline At The Beach, a French film following two young cousins in coastal Normandy. It’s not something I have seen, but the yearning sound of Pauline definitely piques my interest.
The sound Sunnbrella conjures here has something of the earnest and serious emotion of Teenage Fanclub, shot through a misty gauze of nostalgia for the 80s and 90s. With additional vocals from Claire Peng, the chorus is as restrained as the rest of the record, yet is buoyed by soft focus layered vocal harmonies.
Having initially started as a bedroom lo-fi pop project, Prague-born and London-based musician David Zbirka has gradually refined the Sunnbrella sound into something fuller and more ethereal. Describing the process of making Pauline, Zbirka said:
“We went through a few different versions of this song. By the time we landed on the final arrangement, the old lyrics didn’t fit the vibe any more, and I wasn’t sure what I wanted to write about. When I got home from the studio that night, I decided to watch ‘Pauline At The Beach’ on a whim and when I finished it, I sat down and wrote the new lyrics based on the characters in the film. It felt good not to write from personal experience for a change. The film is about the collision of childhood innocence with adult lies, and about how age doesn’t guarantee wisdom. I tried to get these themes across in the lyrics as well.”
Pauline comes ahead of Sunnbrella’s eponymously titled debut EP, out on 1 September on London label Permanent Creeps Records.