This isn't so much an entrance as an ascension. The first album by Montreal-born, Toronto-based singer-songwriter Briannah Donolo under her Rêve moniker boasts levels of unflinching provocativeness, raw emotion, fierce sexiness, vocal flex and admirable spunk to rival the likes of our brightest-burning pop divas. If the planets align, Saturn Return should help launch Rêve into the orbit of household names and generational talents — she's a star going supernova.
The sixth planet from the sun takes shy of three decades to complete its orbit — for those with strong astrological inclinations, this event is an important time of change, one that many often confuse with a mid-life crisis. Released in her 27th year, Rêve's Saturn Return is a time-capsule of the years leading up to the closing of her cosmic loop.
The baker's dozen tracks on the Saturn Return album were reportedly curated from hundreds of bedroom and road-tested compositions, dating back from her earliest studio moments to her post-pandemic regenesis. It feels like a culmination of so much progress and a bold step forward into an exciting future.
Rêve is no stranger to a particularly Canadian brand of fame; she went viral nearly a decade ago for her national anthem renditions at Montréal Canadiens and Blue Jays game, scooped SOCAN and Juno Awards for 2021's "CTRL + ALT + DEL" and even appeared on the second season of Letterkenny spin-off Shoresy. Beauty, eh?
Created with noted producers like Banx & Ranx (Sean Paul), Carl Ryden (David Guetta), Joel Stouffer (Dragonette) and Mike Wise (Allie X), Saturn Return is the sound of Rêve levelling up for the global stage.
The sound Rêve cultivates on her debut is heavily indebted to the music of her youth, classic '90s Eurodance and early 2000s R&B pop. Nostalgic without seeming stale or mindlessly plundered, her songs feel like conduits for genuine inspiration. There's such humanity in her art, small revolutions packaged as pop — it's a galvanizing vision of mass-appeal music that opposes the algorithmic rigidity of so much popular music.
Like chirp-serving goon Shoresy himself, Rêve comes out swinging on Saturn Return, delivering a knock-out punch in its opening track. "Breaking Up with Jesus" is a song of reassessing the relevance of our relationship to certain authority figures. She wanted it to be her "Like a Prayer," noting Madonna as a major influence, but Joel Stouffer's uplifting, gothic breakbeat lands a little closer to Lady Gaga's "Alejandro."
With Carl Ryden production that scans Daft Punk-gone-"Dirrrty," "Disco at the Strip Club" is an absolute banger that feels like all-chorus, though it's not even the record's most disco track. That honour goes to the Mike Watt-produced "Contemporary Love," which could turn Giorgio Moroder's mustache to tinsel. Rêve sings of the effort to keep romance alive in an increasingly robotic, capitalist dating scene — disco with heart that goes straight to yours.
The award-winning Banx & Ranx collab "CTRL + ALT + DEL" features Rêve's voice at its most processed, layered and computerized over a booty-popping woo-girl house track with the kind of saucy saxophone Confidence Man might hear after a line of Ritalin, themselves a spiritual reincarnation of Deee-Lite.
"EX EX EX (Whoops)" laments having woken up with an ex after a late-night booty call, while "Hypersexual" mines similar territory to darker effect, as Rêve romanticizes a lack of control atop moody, gothic synth growls.
Rêve's elastic voice embodies a Miley-esque beachy Southern inflection on certain tracks, with "My My (What a Life)" throwing its own party in the USA with an instrumental that remembers how liquid drum and bass peaked in the late '90s. Obviously one of those hold-up-your-lighter moments at a concert, that Cyrus lilt is employed perfectly in "Past Life," a heart-wrenching love ballad that goes back to the ocean with Rêve's soaring, raspy vocals caressed by delicate piano, the swell of tender strings and the faint sounds of laughter and love. Weighed down by a childhood of crying into a piano in her basement, "Past Life" is one of those vulnerable, intimate instances where people might shy away from yelling, but lean in closer to hear a whisper.
Saying the quiet part loud, thirsty cunnilingus-ode "Tongue" sees Rêve come out on her own terms, and she doubles down in tracks like "Big Boom," where she can be heard happily "kissin' on the girls, don't need the guys." It's still no small feat of courage to be true to yourself at a time when there's so much backlash against those expressing themselves fully and honestly.
Forged over so many formative years, Saturn Return is practically a journal of Rêve's coming-of-age journey. If this is where she's beginning, one can only imagine how far into the stratosphere she can go. On "Whitney," her ode to legendary diva Whitney Houston, she belts out her desire to "dance like Michael, and sing like Whitney, and fuck like Marylin Monroe." Every hook an earworm, every instrumental distinctive, and every lyric empowering without sugar-coating… if this album is any indication, she can do anything she wants to do. Rêve is a dream come true.
(UMC/31 East/Astralwerks)The sixth planet from the sun takes shy of three decades to complete its orbit — for those with strong astrological inclinations, this event is an important time of change, one that many often confuse with a mid-life crisis. Released in her 27th year, Rêve's Saturn Return is a time-capsule of the years leading up to the closing of her cosmic loop.
The baker's dozen tracks on the Saturn Return album were reportedly curated from hundreds of bedroom and road-tested compositions, dating back from her earliest studio moments to her post-pandemic regenesis. It feels like a culmination of so much progress and a bold step forward into an exciting future.
Rêve is no stranger to a particularly Canadian brand of fame; she went viral nearly a decade ago for her national anthem renditions at Montréal Canadiens and Blue Jays game, scooped SOCAN and Juno Awards for 2021's "CTRL + ALT + DEL" and even appeared on the second season of Letterkenny spin-off Shoresy. Beauty, eh?
Created with noted producers like Banx & Ranx (Sean Paul), Carl Ryden (David Guetta), Joel Stouffer (Dragonette) and Mike Wise (Allie X), Saturn Return is the sound of Rêve levelling up for the global stage.
The sound Rêve cultivates on her debut is heavily indebted to the music of her youth, classic '90s Eurodance and early 2000s R&B pop. Nostalgic without seeming stale or mindlessly plundered, her songs feel like conduits for genuine inspiration. There's such humanity in her art, small revolutions packaged as pop — it's a galvanizing vision of mass-appeal music that opposes the algorithmic rigidity of so much popular music.
Like chirp-serving goon Shoresy himself, Rêve comes out swinging on Saturn Return, delivering a knock-out punch in its opening track. "Breaking Up with Jesus" is a song of reassessing the relevance of our relationship to certain authority figures. She wanted it to be her "Like a Prayer," noting Madonna as a major influence, but Joel Stouffer's uplifting, gothic breakbeat lands a little closer to Lady Gaga's "Alejandro."
With Carl Ryden production that scans Daft Punk-gone-"Dirrrty," "Disco at the Strip Club" is an absolute banger that feels like all-chorus, though it's not even the record's most disco track. That honour goes to the Mike Watt-produced "Contemporary Love," which could turn Giorgio Moroder's mustache to tinsel. Rêve sings of the effort to keep romance alive in an increasingly robotic, capitalist dating scene — disco with heart that goes straight to yours.
The award-winning Banx & Ranx collab "CTRL + ALT + DEL" features Rêve's voice at its most processed, layered and computerized over a booty-popping woo-girl house track with the kind of saucy saxophone Confidence Man might hear after a line of Ritalin, themselves a spiritual reincarnation of Deee-Lite.
"EX EX EX (Whoops)" laments having woken up with an ex after a late-night booty call, while "Hypersexual" mines similar territory to darker effect, as Rêve romanticizes a lack of control atop moody, gothic synth growls.
Rêve's elastic voice embodies a Miley-esque beachy Southern inflection on certain tracks, with "My My (What a Life)" throwing its own party in the USA with an instrumental that remembers how liquid drum and bass peaked in the late '90s. Obviously one of those hold-up-your-lighter moments at a concert, that Cyrus lilt is employed perfectly in "Past Life," a heart-wrenching love ballad that goes back to the ocean with Rêve's soaring, raspy vocals caressed by delicate piano, the swell of tender strings and the faint sounds of laughter and love. Weighed down by a childhood of crying into a piano in her basement, "Past Life" is one of those vulnerable, intimate instances where people might shy away from yelling, but lean in closer to hear a whisper.
Saying the quiet part loud, thirsty cunnilingus-ode "Tongue" sees Rêve come out on her own terms, and she doubles down in tracks like "Big Boom," where she can be heard happily "kissin' on the girls, don't need the guys." It's still no small feat of courage to be true to yourself at a time when there's so much backlash against those expressing themselves fully and honestly.
Forged over so many formative years, Saturn Return is practically a journal of Rêve's coming-of-age journey. If this is where she's beginning, one can only imagine how far into the stratosphere she can go. On "Whitney," her ode to legendary diva Whitney Houston, she belts out her desire to "dance like Michael, and sing like Whitney, and fuck like Marylin Monroe." Every hook an earworm, every instrumental distinctive, and every lyric empowering without sugar-coating… if this album is any indication, she can do anything she wants to do. Rêve is a dream come true.
