‘Dove Fall’ the latest single by French shoegaze band Avalon Bloom is out today. This is the premiere single from their new upcoming project, having released their first homemade self-titled album in November of 2023. Hailing from Montpellier, the band of four bring energetic performances filled with vocal blends and guitars saturated in reverb and distortion. I had a chance to catch up with them in the greenroom at L’Alimentation Générale back in October, where they played a show with Spanish Horses and Children of the Pope put together by Orange Peel Presents. Check out our conversation below + don’t miss out on an opportunity to catch the band live at one of the upcoming shows:
Brittany: Let’s get to the basics. How long have you been playing together? How long has Avalon Bloom been a thing?
Sam: Two years now.
Brittany: Okay, how did everyone meet?
Matthieu: Oh! That’s a long story. (laughs)
Brittany: Let’s hear the long story.
Tanguy: So I met Matthieu…
Matthieu: We were all studying graphic design at Montpellier.
Tanguy: I met him first, but also my best friend is Sam’s girlfriend, and she tried to have us meet each other.
Matthieu: Yeah, because everybody was playing music…
Sam: No, no…
Matthieu: Oh, yeah, except Tanguy.
Tanguy: I was not playing bass.
Sam: We just gave a bass to Tanguy.
Brittany: Okay, so you learned for the band?
Tanguy: Yeah, I learned to play bass for the band because they needed it. So at first it was three.
Nino: So… (laughs) It’s difficult to explain, but at the beginning, I saw a video of just Tony and Sam on Instagram stories jamming and it was in a beautiful studio, so I was like: ‘Woah, crazy I want to meet these people’. And then we met each other and we said we have to make a band together. But Tanguy didn’t play music.
Tanguy: I had to learn to play really fast.
Nino: He learned the bass in three months.
Tanguy: Yeah! I started to play bass, and we started… but, you know the song ‘Nanana’, the last song we played?
Brittany: Yes.
Tanguy: That’s the first song we did, and Matthieu wasn’t in the band at the beginning. I just had three months to figure out bass, and we did our first show five months later.
Sam: But Matthieu came in around four months… he straightened the band… uh… (says something in French to Matthieu)
Matthieu: Oh, yes (laughs). I did the final touch.
(everyone laughs)
Brittany: And do you now feel comfortable or more confident playing bass? Are you still learning? How do you feel about your bass skills?
Tanguy: Yeah, because I started to play bass with fingers.
Brittany: Well bass is super important. Come on, that’s the rhythm section.
Everyone: Yeah!
Brittany: Can’t fuck it up.
Matthieu: It’s the main section.
Tanguy: But I am better now, and I try to have more confidence with the guitar pick, because our style of music is better when you play with a pick. And now it’s pretty good for me, I think. But I can do better, so I try to learn something every time.
Brittany: So, I know you (Tanguy) are new to music, but has anyone been in a band prior to Avalon Bloom?
Matthieu: Ooh, I was in some band in high school, when I was a teenager. We did some ‘Hotel California’ music, so it’s kind of cringey, but we were just starting and when you like music…
Brittany: Everything is cringe when you did it in high school.
Matthieu: But you need to do it.
Brittany: Yeah, of course. It’s part of growing.
Sam: For me, I have a lot of projects. I have a studio at home, I’ve built a lot of projects and have worked for tribute bands, a lot of gigs and what not.
Nino: They did study music.
Matthieu: I had a jazz group, so I did jazz guitar.
Tanguy: I want to add something, Nino doesn’t want to say it but at first he just screamed and would bang on the drums. (Tanguy mimics Nino screaming and banging drums) Just to make noise, you know?
Nino: At the beginning I wanted to make hardcore music because I was into it.
Brittany: Well, one day. Maybe it’s still in your future.
(laughs)
Nino: Maybe, maybe… (laughs) No, but now I discovered many other things, I like rock…
Tanguy: Shoegaze…
Nino: But at the beginning I was into the hardcore scene. Now I’ve discovered shoegaze and more, so yeah.
Photos by @caloulenka
Brittany: Do you guys tour around France a lot? Do you play mostly in your hometown, what’s it like?
Nino: We mostly play in France.
Brittany: Because your Paris fans are crazy.
Tanguy: It’s the fourth time we’ve played here.
Nino: Yeah, we play in the south of France a lot, because we come from there, like Montpellier, Marseille.
Brittany: And, do you have a favorite show you’ve ever played?
Everyone: Yeah!
Brittany: Okay, let’s hear it.
Matthieu: For me, I would say in Montpellier at a place where great bands have played, it’s like the main place. In the nineties Radiohead played there, RHCP… those kinds of bands. So, when we were playing Montpellier I was walking by that place and thought ‘It would be crazy to play there’… and two years later in the main event and it was our show, it was full and it was crazy.
Tanguy: Because the capacity of the room is 700 people, and then 100 people got left outside.
Brittany: It was really special to see fans going crazy here tonight and I thought it was really fun.
Matthieu: It’s all friends here at the show and the rock scene is going to explode I guess. I hope so.
Nino: It’s very connected, we know a lot of people even if we’re not from the same city. We listen to each other’s music, it’s not like in England or…
Matthieu: There’s not a lot of bands here.
Sam: I think this is the time of rock and roll now, a lot of young people like rock music, and all these young people scream at gigs and are very happy to be here. Because in France we don’t have a lot of gigs and shows, it’s not like New York and London, maybe a little bit in Paris.
Brittany: I think even Paris… I live here now. I’ve met a lot of talented musicians and there are a lot of cool things happening, but it feels like it’s a bit spread out and not as easy to find as I thought it would be.
Tanguy: Yeah, I think that’s the reason why in certain scenes a lot of people try to make ‘British songs’. A lot of bands do it, I’m not saying we are different, because we are influenced by the United States shoegaze scene, also by the punk scene, we all have different influences but we don’t do this ‘British…’ I don’t know how to say it.
Nino: Yeah. Britpop.
Brittany: I know what you are talking about.
Tanguy: So we are really happy every time we come to Paris. There’s a lot of engagement at our concerts, there’s a lot of energy and that’s what we want. When we started the band we wanted to… you know Turnstile, Title Fight, all these kinds of bands. The community around this kind of music, the artists are just so very close to the people. The band is not just the band, the band is a community. And on social media we answer to everyone, we want to build this community and grow together.
Nino: This is very important because we come from not a very big city or a big rock scene, there are maybe three or four bands there.
Brittany: That was one of the questions I was going to ask, because speaking with Spanish Horses they said that rock wasn’t that big in France. It’s not that dominant genre in the United States either. You have your hip hop, your rap, pop music… Rock is still very very big, don’t get me wrong, it exists and it’s a great scene, but it’s just not a dominant genre anymore. You guys said just a second ago you feel it’s reemerging and coming back. Why do you feel that way?
Nino: Well, we just see it.
Brittany: But has it changed or now it feels different?
Tanguy: When we do the Nanana song, that’s not the one we prefer to do live. That’s the one we like less, but it’s the most ‘pop’ song on the album, and on social media it had a lot of impact, like 200k views but for very different people.
Nino: Yeah, that song connects with everyone, not really just rock people. It can connect with people who only listen to rap, or indie, you know? But now we have to find more ways and evolve with it.
Matthieu: The nineties spirit is coming back, I guess.
Brittany: Well, everything we love…
Matthieu: And what we listen to…
Brittany: Well what am I wearing right now, are you kidding me? (a very 90s outfit)
Everyone: Yeah!
Matthieu: That’s what I mean. There’s this return of the nineties and bands like Radiohead, and I think people start to listen again to what their parents were listening to. But I think that everyone can like rock music. I don’t know. If we can make them love our style, or make some people come to shows, that’s cool.
Tanguy: You can also see it on TikTok, you know? There are a lot of songs that are popping now because they’re on TikTok.
Nino: Even Deftones, they’ve been around for…
Brittany: Yeah, they got a resurgence.
Nino: Yeah, so it’s crazy. There are some interesting things to do in France.
Tanguy: And we want to spread really good energy.
Brittany: Well, I think you guys are great. I’m a huge fan of rock and roll, so I hope that’s true. Okay, so I have three more questions for you guys and I’ll let you go, I know you are sweating over here… (gestures at Sam) (the room is incredibly hot)
(Sam laughs)
Nino: I need to drink. Let me go out and drink. 
Brittany: So, what does music writing look like for you guys? Do you write separately, do you come in with parts, do you come in with melodies?
Sam: No, we devise the songs but maybe sometimes Matthieu comes with a full song, sometimes Tanguy will come in with a riff on bass, and after that we work it together, we say what works and what doesn’t.
Nino: We compose it together.
Tanguy: We try to build something new with each try, and not stay stagnant or comfortable like everyone knows what they do and repeat it.
Brittany: And do you prefer playing live or recording music?
Matthieu and Nino: Live.
Sam: I like both.
Matthieu: Recording is fun because you can work on the sound and the effect pedals, but when you play live there is some energy that only comes from the people you’re playing in front of.
Brittany: What does it feel like to listen to an album that you just finished? Like ‘Oh Shit, we’re done’. Is it a good feeling or a bad feeling?
Tanguy: Sometimes we don’t like the songs.
(everyone laughs)
Matthieu: Sometimes you’ll record a song that you’ve been playing for two years, so you’ve heard it, and you’re bored by it. So it’s a lot of time and work and questions. We are very proud of what we are working on, but we’re happy we’re done.
Brittany: I know you came out with your album in 2023, that was your first full length album, before just some eps and singles?
Tony: Yes.
Brittany: Are you guys working on new music, do you have anything in the future?
Everyone: Yeah!
Nino: We’re cooking.
Brittany: I’ll make sure to write exactly that.
Tanguy: We were at the studio the past week, then laid down bass and drums.
Brittany: Is this a 2025 project?
Everyone: Yeah.
Tanguy: It’s going to be 5 singles, the first one is going to be released in January just before our release show and we have a big show in Montpellier, at the same place Matthieu mentioned. We are cooking something really cool.
Brittany: What are some French bands that you guys can recommend to the people who read?
Matthieu: Curtism, a band from south of France. Indie, shoegaze. It’s very cool and we’ve been playing with them. These guys are very great, you should listen.
Tanguy: I would say Loons. This guy is our friend, everyday life friend. He recorded an album the past year, I think they’ll release it this fall. Shoegazy stuff and maybe metal… but the compositions of the songs are really cool, it’s really well produced.
Sam: For me Spanish Horses.
Brittany: Wow, I don’t think I know them. (sarcastically)
Sam: I love Spanish Horses because I want to play with them when we’re not playing Paris. I liked them before we were playing and now we’re friends.
Nino: I would say Off Centre, they’re very interesting and from a very small scene. Maybe three or four bands but all really interesting.
Tanguy: I would also say Title Fight.
Sam: I would also say The Beatles.
(laughs)
Brittany: And we’ll close it off with The Beatles.