L'Imperatrice - "Pulsar"

Much brighter than I expected

L’Imperatrice is a new act for me — a recommendation from a friend who I typically chat with about Metal or Jazz. And his Metal preferences are typically pretty gnarly. So I have made some assumptions about what this album would present before doing my research for this review (and those assumptions have been illustrated when I’ve mentioned this album on my last Release Radar or two); and I typically don’t really do research on the album until I’ve heard it at least once.

So imagine my surprise and bafflement when the album I expect to be some sort of Sludge Death or something turns out to be super vibey, atmospheric Electropop and Nu-Disco. Toss in a little subtle Jazz technicality here and there and lean into the psychedelic 70s vibes, and you have the basic composition of what Pulsar is.

Not Metal in the slightest. I would be disappointed if this wasn’t so damned good. But first…

L’Imperatrice (translated: The Empress) is a French sextet who have really begun to make a name for themselves in the last several years. Pulsar is only their third album; their first two released in 2018 and 2021, respectively, and the band originally formed in 2012.

The band has, in just these last six or seven years, already started to garner serious international acclaim, winning awards and selling out shows throughout Europe and North America. They’ve also played Coachella in 2022 and 2024, and they’re listed two lines higher the second time around.

And for good reason. I can’t speak for their first two albums,¹ of course, but I’ve been immediately impressed by Pulsar. It’s a smooth blend of sounds and styles that becomes its own unique and addictive sound.

The album kicks off with an instrumental intro, “Cosmogonie”, which falls just shy of three minutes in play time. I would normally trim this sort of fat from the album before dropping it into my annual lists, but it’s an excellent little instrumental, and I could honestly take a whole album of just that. It does a great job of loading you into the album and setting the tone. While the other nine songs on the album each vary somewhat in style, the tone and mood is all very close to the vibes set out here with “Cosmogonie”.

Most of the songs are in French, but empires tend to be large, and L’Imperatrice isn’t beholden to any single language. “Me Da Igual” contains phrases in Portuguese; “Danza Marilu” features Italian vocalist Fabiana Martone, who sings in her native tongue; and both “Love From the Other Side” and “Any Way” are in English. That final example features Folk artist Maggie Rogers on vocals, and she gives it a very R&B sort of spin.

Every song here is excellent. Even “Danza Marilu”, which borders on overly repetitive through the chorus, but it’s also such an electrifying bop that it fails to become annoying.

I have not analyzed the lyrics for every song — I relied on Google Translate for several, but I have not gotten through the whole album yet. But the album leans heavily on dance and passion as its central themes — and a sort of spectral, stellar mood through all of it, as the album’s title, Pulsar, indicates. Pulsars, or Neutron Stars, are rapidly spinning stars which are formed during smaller supernovas; that is, when the star does not exceed the mass threshold to collapse all the way down to a black hole. The term ‘pulsar’ comes from the beams of radio waves being emitted from the star’s poles.

Spinning fast and emitting light (disco ball…) and beams of radio (ties in to music) waves?

I think it’s pretty clever, anyhow.

I love this album. It’s great.

Rating: Blue

1. Yet. I’ve already added them to the list of albums to explore when I have time.