Gal Musette Baroque Pop New Album Pendulum
Entitled Pendulum, the eleven-track album explores the duality of emotions, taking a deep dive into conflicting emotions such as peace versus turbulence, acceptance juxtaposed with hopelessness, and bravery in opposition to weakness. Gal confides, "The order of the record puts these songs in opposition, like the swinging of a pendulum (hence the album title) taking you on a song-to-song journey with sharp detours between these two mental states."
Sonically, Pendulum is a bold statement filled with synths, loops, layered drums and percussion, orchestration, and harmonies while distinctly embodying a stylistic influence of music production from the 50s and 60s.
Gal Musette has toured with The Magnetic Fields, Donavon Frankenreiter, and has collaborated with Rufus Wainwright. She has been profiled by the likes of NPR, Consequence and LADYGUNN, among others.
Gal Musette is the artist name used by Grace Freeman, who began writing piano and guitar based lyrical compositions and performing at open mics in her home city of San Clemente, CA at the age of 10. Her graceful approach to melody-driven indie-folk has captured audiences all over Southern California.
At age 14, inspired by The Magnetic Fields’ triple album 69 Love Songs, Gal recorded her own collection titled 70 Love Songs, which caught the attention of the band, and won her an opening slot on a few of their Midwestern U.S. tour dates. In more recent years, Gal has opened for several renowned artists such as Macy Gray, Suzanne Vega, Todd Snyder, and Donavon Frankenreiter. While her artist name is taken from bal-musette, the accordion-based, waltz-style French instrumental music, Gal’s primary inspiration is drawn from songwriters including Joni Mitchell, Regina Spektor, Björk, Cocteau Twins, Burt Bacharach, Big Thief and The Cure.
In October 2021, Gal released her debut album, Backwards Lullaby, featuring a vocal duet with one of her biggest musical inspirations, Rufus Wainwright. The record explores the pangs of hopeless romances and unrequited love, what it’s like to move beyond idealized love into the acceptance of what is real and constant, as well as the cyclical nature of life and love in relationships. In July 2022, Gal released an orchestral EP consisting of three re-imagined cuts from Backwards Lullaby featuring the musicianship of Via Mardot a talented multi-instrumentalist based in Detroit, Michigan.
Her sophomore album Pendulum explores the swinging and ever changing nature of mental stability, with moments of peace, turbulence, acceptance, hopelessness, abjection, obsession, bravery and weakness. These moments are songs put in opposition to each other and sown together to make for a cathartic experience reflecting the ebbs and flows of the mind.
