Marie Davidson & L'Œil Nu - Renegade Breakdown (2LP)

Marie Davidson pivoted at just the right time. After Working Class Woman turned club fatigue into razor-edged techno confessionals, she stepped sideways into a trio with Pierre Guerineau and Asaël R. Robitaille, and the result is Renegade Breakdown, released 25 September 2020 on Ninja Tune. It feels like a love letter to listening rather than raving. The tempos loosen, the shoulders drop, and a crate’s worth of post-disco, soft rock and synth-pop influences slide into view. Plenty of artists talk about reinvention. This one actually does it.

The title track sets the tone. It’s a swaggering slow-burn built on a loping bass and a vocal that treats dance music’s grind with a wry side-eye. You can hear the band in the room, not just presets and a sidechain. Davidson’s voice can still cut like a knife, but here it’s paired with a gleam that nods to cosmic boogie and late-night radio more than to the warehouse. Pitchfork and The Guardian both called out the stylistic swerve when it landed, and you can hear why within a minute.

Lead Sister is the album’s quiet gut punch. Taking its title from a nickname linked with Karen Carpenter, it leans into a kind of satin-soft melancholy you might not expect from someone who wrote the most quietly brutal club monologues of the last decade. The arrangement is tasteful but never anaemic, with the trio giving the vocal miles of space to breathe. You think of the Carpenters, sure, but also of Adult Contemporary as a texture to play with, not a straight jacket. Davidson sings like she means it, in full pop phrasing rather than clipped spoken word, and it works.

C’est parce que j’m’en fous swings the other way, a French-language earworm that rides a sleek synth line and keeps its hooks close. She has always moved between English and French with ease. Here the bilingual approach feels less like a flourish and more like the album’s spine, a way of threading Montreal’s particular cultural mix straight into the music. Back to Rock does what it says on the label. It folds guitar colour into the set without tipping into cosplay, more Alan Parsons on a dim car stereo than arena chest-beating. Worst Comes to Worst hits a smoky, late-night stride, the kind of track that makes you text a friend a link with three heart emojis.

What makes the record pop is the chemistry of the trio. Guerineau and Robitaille aren’t anonymous studio hands. They push the arrangements toward something tactile. Live bass and guitar lean into analog synths. Drum programming feels played rather than pencilled. The trio takes cues from boogie, city pop, Italo and chanson, then files the serial numbers off. So the album tilts vintage, but it never sinks into pastiche. The production is clean, warm and dry, the kind of sound that rewards a quiet room and a decent set of speakers.

There is a story under all this gloss. In interviews around the release, Davidson spoke about being burnt out on club culture and wanting to write songs again. You can hear that resolve across Renegade Breakdown. The beats sit down instead of stomping. Choruses arrive. The voice is up front. It’s the relief of leaving a loud bar and walking into night air. Not a rejection of the past, but a decision to trust other muscles.

If you’re flicking through bins at a Melbourne record store, Renegade Breakdown vinyl will jump out for exactly that reason. It lives well on wax, with enough dynamic range to let the basslines throb gently and the vocals sit right. Marie Davidson vinyl tends to disappear quickly here, and this one has become a favourite for weeknight spins. If you prefer to buy Marie Davidson records online, keep an eye on restocks, since Marie Davidson albums on vinyl have a habit of going out of print for stretches in the usual corners of vinyl records Australia.

Four years on, the album reads as a line in the sand. It doesn’t ask whether the floor is ready. It asks if you are ready to sit with a song again. For fans who came in via Working Class Woman, that shift might feel abrupt at first. Give it a full play. The hooks bloom slowly, and the attitude is still there, just dressed in silk instead of leather. Renegade Breakdown isn’t an exit from the club so much as an open window beside it, and the breeze coming through feels pretty great.