Interview: Healees
Parisian shoegazers serve up "power pop songs you can take psychedelic drugs to"
In my university days, I had the good fortune to live with a shoegaze-obsessed friend.
Our decaying, end-of-terrace property had undergone a series of shoddy renovations that rendered it an absolute death trap. While my shoegaze buddy slept in a basement room with no feasible fire escape, I was three storeys above in a chilly converted attic, the penthouse to his pavement.
Despite our significant separation, it wasn’t unusual to hear strains of Swervedriver’s 1993 classic Mezcal Head reverberating from the depths. I probably heard that record a couple of hundred times over two years — and I didn’t complain once.
I learned a lot about shoegaze during this period, developing a deep affection for the genre that continues to this day. This made it an ideal focal point for the first edition of my Repeat Prescription playlist series.
When I sat down to narrow down my selections for Repeat Prescription #1, there was only one candidate for the playlist’s opening track — the multinational Parisian quartet, Healees.
The band released Coin de l’œil, their long-awaited debut, via Toulouse-based Hidden Bay Records earlier this month. A beautifully cohesive album that ebbs and flows majestically, it’s been on heavy rotation in my house over the past few weeks.
There is evidently a lot of good music released every week, but for all those stellar songs, I don’t believe there are many truly great albums. I try to restrict such superlatives for material I believe in — records I will genuinely return to again and again. Coin de l’œil is one such example. It’s stunning and surprisingly broad in its scope. Beyond the shoegaze, there’s a flash of jangle, a hint of power pop, and an undercurrent of new wave.
I caught up with Healees’ Bryan Quinn to learn a little more about the band’s background, the genesis of Coin de l’œil, and the music that inspires them.
DC: Healees formed back in 2015 and Coin de l’œil is obviously your debut album. Was it a conscious decision to fully develop your sound before making this musical statement, or is it merely the reality of being four adults with jobs and busy lives? Either way, the lengthy gestation period has resulted in a refined, cohesive and rather beautiful record!
BQ: Thank you! We threw away our more or less our entire first batch of songs from the first year or two of playing together — we didn’t really get going as a proper band until maybe mid-2017 or so when we picked up Arthur on drums. After that, we released a set of demos in 2019, then Covid happened... We put out a 33-minute “EP” in 2022, now an LP with 3 b-sides in late 2024, so we’ve managed to stick to a fairly substantial release every two to three years. We definitely throw away a fair amount of material all the time, so in that regard there is a conscious decision to avoid releasing music we think sucks. But there is indeed also the fact that we have fairly demanding day jobs and we are producing everything ourselves at home — so yeah, it takes a while!
Listening to Coin de l’œil I was reminded of a few genre heavyweights like Ride and Slowdive, but I also heard echoes of Swervedriver and Pale Saints in the guitar work. There’s also a very welcome nod to jangle evident throughout. Are there any less obvious influences that inspired the record?
First of all, let me say that Swervedriver is probably my favourite band of all time so thank you for that! As for less obvious ones — Renaud is a big fan of the Wedding Present, does that fall under jangle? We actually started playing in DADGAD because we were trying to figure out a few songs off Sun Kil Moon’s Ghosts of the Great Highway while drunk at a dinner party so I guess that has to count... For harmonies and bittersweet melodies there is still none greater than Matthew Sweet, the early Teenage Fanclub records are big for us in that regard too. I'm always trying to lift melodies from Fairport/Richard & Linda Thompson... Really though the answer is new wave pop and post-punk, if we’re singing karaoke it’s probably the Cure, Echo & the Bunnymen or Psychedelic Furs. Or Sean Paul.
How do you approach working in a genre (shoegaze) that still feels quite dominated by the established classics, to the extent that critics (and I’m mindful I’ve basically done this above!) constantly reference the same core artists? Do you see an opportunity to explore new sonic terrain or are you comfortable putting your songwriting spin on the genre?
Shoegaze is such a wide spectrum, I almost think of it as a sort of aesthetic layer that can be applied to a bunch of different genres, from screamo to EDM to ambient... I’m not 100% sure we are even a shoegaze band? We do have a lot of pedals I guess. Anyway to answer your question I don’t think we’re breaking any serious ground, we just want to make music that we like and what we like is power pop songs that you can take psychedelic drugs to. That said, for our next LP we will of course be obligated to add a string section and horns.
Reflecting on the guitar sound on tracks like “Drunk” and “Still Ok”, the term 'beautiful noise’ (the title of the 2014 documentary on the shoegaze scene) comes to mind. Are you a connoisseur of vintage guitar pedals and amplifiers, or do you achieve the classic sound with new technology? I once offended Adam Franklin by asking him this very question!
I too am now offended — but only because I’m once again trying to imitate Adam Franklin! We have a fair amount of gear but none of it currently counts as vintage. There are a couple of ‘60s Guilds that I rather regret selling, clearly should have held onto that Juno-60... anyway we play normal recent issue guitars into bog standard Fender Hot Rod amps. It’s true that we each have a couple slightly fancy digital reverb/delay/mod pedals, but digital was always a cornerstone of shoegaze — MBV and the SPX90, hello. The one real technological luxury I use is a loop switcher that controls a dozen or so pedals live because it’s just too hard to play a guitar melody while singing a harmony while also quickly turning multiple pedals on and off — two out of three is no problem but if you need to do them all at once, it’s switcher time. For recording, I will just say that we are not above using software synths and effects plug-ins out of necessity but if we were wealthy and had a soundproof barn somewhere then yes it would be full of vintage analog gear... that we would probably be incompetent at using.
I visited Paris last year for the first time in my adult life. How do you find the music scene there? Is it an easy place to be an up and coming band?
The Paris music scene is really vibrant now, there’s great indie pop bands like En Attendant Ana, Special Friend, Dog Park... there’s a lot of great shoegaze happening here too at the moment with bands like Midscale and Pam Risourié. On the logistical side it’s not super easy to be a band in Paris because even compared to other world capitals it is very dense. The apartments are tiny, the sidewalks are narrow, the traffic is atrocious, it’s just not an easy place to transport gear and find a place to be loud. On top of that some of the best small venues have either closed in recent years (RIP Espace B) or keep having trouble with the authorities over code/noise issues... Fortunately, there are a number of very dedicated labels and promoters like Howlin Banana, Indie or Die/La Bagarre, Gutter Melodies etc. working very hard to keep the music scene going strong and I would say they are succeeding!
There are 120,000 tracks uploaded to digital streaming services every day. How do try to cut through the noise and get your music to the audience it deserves? Are you reliant on word of mouth and touring or is there a conscious time/effort investment in promotion?
Ha! I have no idea — we are so terrible at self-promotion. We are starting to realise that is a job unto itself, a job that we are not good at. We were kind of counting on this interview to make us famous... no? I guess the answer is shows and word of mouth, plus our very unserious Insta account.
I think I’m old enough to have lived through a few shoegaze revivals at this point! The genre really seems to be having a moment right now though. Which current shoegaze/dream-pop artists excite you?
I am loving the latest Julie record, to me they seem like true heirs to the Swirlies sound while making it their own... The new Dummy record is fantastic, you can’t really call it shoegaze per se but it's adjacent... DIIV of course remain masters of their craft, Alvvays are genius and only getting better as they go, Corridor also is not shoegaze but whatever, they continue to be awesome.
Aside from Healees, who do you think is breathing new life into the genre?
Here I would like to mention our Hidden Bay Records labelmates The Death of Pop. Their latest record FLOG is just brilliant - it’s dream-pop, it’s shoegaze, it’s 80s radio prog... nostalgic, fresh, catchy as hell... Until they are world-famous they will be criminally under-appreciated in my opinion.
It’s quite rare to find a four piece band comprised of members with four different nationalities (American, Swedish, Belgian and French). I was heartened to see you’d been able to play some recent shows in the UK (although sadly not in the North). I would have envisaged some bureaucratic issues for an up and coming European band coming to the UK post-Brexit — were there any, or are my expectations influenced by remain-voting sour grapes?
We have no public comment on any official authorisations we may or may not have sought or received for shows outside the EU!
Have you been able to play shows in each member’s home country yet?
We have played in France, the UK and one show in Brooklyn that Renaud couldn’t make it to, so... no.
Final question. At its heart, The Perfect Prescription is a newsletter specialising in new music recommendations. Are you each able to recommend an unheralded new(ish) band and a key track, either from your home countries or from France?
Here are a few tracks from our favourite shoegaze/dream-pop bands currently operating in France:
Cosmopaark - “Olive Tree”
Midscale - “Bleeding in the Backseat”
Pam Risourié - “You Are the Sound”
And some non-shoegaze tracks from artists in our countries:
Duck Fight Goose - “The Speed of Time” (dreamy, krauty experimental jazz pop from Shanghai)
Laurel Canyon - “Garden of Eden” (ripping garage rock from East Coast USA)
Astéréotypie - “Je ris pour autre chose” (humorous, dancy post-punk from France — must understand French to truly appreciate)
We don’t really know what’s going in Sweden at the moment, sorry!
Thank you to Bryan and the rest of Healees for their time. I really can’t recommend this band and the sensational Coin de l’œil highly enough. As ever, if you like what you hear, please consider supporting Healees by buying the record and seeing them live if you can. And please tell your like-minded friends about them. I think this a band with significant appeal and they really deserve a bigger audience.