En Attendant Ana

Parisian indie outfit En Attendant Ana fuse strong melodic songwriting with a fuzzy lo-fi approach, splitting the difference between a garage punk aesthetic and pop sophistication. They released their 2018 debut, Lost and Found, on Chicago’s Trouble in Mind label, followed two years later by Juillet. With their third release, Principia, the band continued to evolve into more sophisticated pop territory with smart, layered arrangements and heightened musicianship; the album was released in early 2023. En Attendant Ana formed in 2014 around the quintet of Margaux Bouchaudon (vocals, keyboards, guitar), Camille Fréchou (trumpet, guitar, backing vocals), Maxence Tomasso (guitar, backing vocals), Antoine Vaugelade (bass), and Adrien Pollin (drums). After debuting in 2016 with the noisy six-track Songs from the Cave EP, a collaboration between the Montagne Sacrée and Buddy Records labels, En Attendant Ana scored an American distribution deal with Trouble in Mind, which issued their full-length debut in the spring of 2018. Lost and Found paired youthful energy with the jangling tone of Britain’s mid-’80s C-86 scene and a bit of Velvet Underground attitude. The group issued a follow-up, Juillet, in January 2020, which carried a similar energy but bore more sophisticated arrangements and structures. Not long after its release, the group’s soundman Vincent Hivert took over on bass, replacing Vaugelade. Over the next few years, En Attendant Ana’s sound grew nimbler and more nuanced with Bouchaudon adopting a more reflective and questioning tone in her songwriting. For their third release, the group took an entirely D.I.Y. approach, recording, producing, and mixing entirely on their own. The resulting album, 2023′s Principia, pushed the band into a new level of musicianship with detailed arrangements and more complicated structures, while retaining the ongoing aesthetic of their earlier work. ~ Timothy Monger