Useless Boy EPK

JE T'AIME: for these few letters, some live, some go mad, but above all, many die.

Live until you go mad, live until you die - that's the credo of the cold-wave trio whose spirited spleen sprang from the muggy basements of Parisian nightlife in 2018. While the classic post-punk and new wave influences are obviously there, the driving rain that falls on these three anti-heroes is tinged with the flashing colors of neon lights and their artificial heat. JE T'AIME stirs up your guts as much as your behinds, and blows the codes with a jubilant, touching snarl.

After a self-titled debut album released in 2019 on Manic Depression and Icy Cold Records, the band signed the diptych PASSIVE/AGGRESSIVE in 2022, choosing Valentine's Day and All Souls' Day to release both parts. In the few years of its existence, JE T'AIME has rocked audiences
at Belgium's W-Fest, Poland's Castle Party Festival, England's Infest Festival, Portugal's Extramuralhas and Germany's Wave Gotik Treffen... If Europe has to learn a few French words, it might as well be “JE T'AIME”.

In 2024, JE T'AIME is six years old. Their new album, Useless Boy, is an expressionist cry, a sad party where the melancholic thrill is always hidden behind illusory comforts. More than ever, it's a
flight into the future, a rejection of the dreary conventions of the real world. JE T'AIME locks itself away in its own intimate universe to avoid confronting dull, tasteless normality. Sorrows are sublimated by the all-consuming energy of a trio for whom maturing rhymes with dying, skilfully juggling nostalgia and modernity.

JE T'AIME finds grace in its rejection of uniformity, and pushes back against the outside world, trapped in prisons that also protect. Useless Boy is a new album of invisible walls, fractures, anguish and broken dreams... But since all victories are vain illusions, JE T'AIME's exuberance and torment are a saving tornado, an antidote to the lies we tell ourselves day after day: no, we're not learning anything, we're not growing, and our glory days won't give meaning to our lives. In any case, this austere world leaves no room for the Useless Boys.

- Pierre Sopor, journalist.

TRACK BY TRACK USELESS BOY :

Nightcrawler is a hypnotic track in which the protagonist is consumed by an intense and dangerous passion. The lyrics evoke poignant solitude, burning desire and a mysterious figure embodying an erotic ‘nightbird’.

Unbroken Sleep explores the struggle against a burdensome past, symbolised by a frantic race to escape the ghosts of past mistakes. The protagonist desperately seeks rest and inner peace after paying for his mistakes.

The Dreams Cease evokes the desperate quest for perfection,
whether through music or dreams, only to be met with emptiness and loneliness.

Useless Boy depicts the inner distress of a boy who feels useless and lost, desperately searching for meaning in his life. The echoes of the past and the emptiness of his existence trap him in a cycle of doubt and loneliness.

Whispers [Lost in the Echoes] describes the agonising sensation of being trapped in a nightmare, where reality and dreams merge.

Dead Leaves explores the theme of loss and forgetting. The evocation of fallen leaves and the struggle against their
disappearance reflect a poignant nostalgia for the fragility of memory.

Silent Monsters between fear, powerlessness in the face of external chaos and the inexorable call of death, the song explores the pain of a soul worn down by time.

Wrong Fold describes a lost boy, without ambition or purpose, wandering in a world that goes on without him. His existence seems marked by failure and oblivion, with shattered dreams and a life without direction. The song expresses the sadness of an extinguished youth, reduced to a ‘mistake’ in an indifferent system.

Letter From Hell is a song written in the form of a letter from a prisoner who describes his daily life in hell with a strange resignation. Despite the sadness of his situation, he seeks to reassure the recipient, almost hinting that he might enjoy hell too.

Stories Not Told explores the fear of death and the inevitable
decline of the body in the face of old age. Each passing day
accentuates this anguish. The song evokes a slow, inexorable
descent towards the end, where illness and time take their toll on the soul.

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A WORD FROM ANAÏS NOVEMBRE :

"It's a very intimate song, and despite the symbolic charge of its setting filled with history, it's this intimacy that I'm evoking here.
It's a sincere simplicity, a total stripping down; my job this time was to completely erase myself, leaving behind the frills, the hidden languages. Leaving only the cold beauty of the tragedy of this last track."

Anaïs Novembre is a french photographer and director, and long-time partner of JE T'AIME, for whom she has produced numerous visuals and music videos.

CHECK ANAIS' WORK

THE BAND ABOUT THIS SONG

"Our last double album "PASSIVE/AGGRESSIVE", talks about the "Peter Pan syndrome" and the difficulty of growing up. Our main character is constantly caught up in the past, repeats the same mistakes over and over again, and ends up not being able to move forward in his life.
It is no mystery that the band's music constantly looks for influences in the past 80’s for that reason.

On this record, we felt the need to find how to mix our 3 personnalities but keeping it coherent. That gives a more complex sound, but still catchy, dark and open at the same time, to bring life to the lyrics based on our own stories. We're definitely not only killing a fictional character, but also closing a trilogy, and signing the end of an era for us in this song."

Lyrics

I can’t feel the sun on my skin
Perhaps I’m in winter
I no longer hear the storm
Perhaps I've gone deaf

Can’t see your beautiful hair
Perhaps I’ve gone blind
I cannot feel my heart beating
I must have screwed up again

A kiss I’m in hell
A kiss I’m in hell
Dry your tears

I can't see your beautiful smile
Perhaps you're too tired of me
I wish I could have told you
A lot of things like this