La Nuit

The night behind L'Heure Bleue, told once, from dark to light.

Minuit

It begins in a cabaret where the band is still tuning and the rain has just stopped pretending to be polite. She arrives the way weather does, without asking. He looks away, then looks again. They always do. She lets him buy the wine and keeps her name for herself, because a name is a door and the night has only just opened. Enchantée, she says, and the word means more than hello.

Deux heures du matin

His apartment has not changed. The little table, the record player, the doors she remembers one by one. They dance slowly between the furniture and the years, and she asks the night for one impossible thing: stay. Not forever. Forever is for people with mornings. Just until the streetlights fade. Reviens is not a word here, it is a hand on the small of a back.

Cinq heures

The blue hour finds her at the door with her coat on and her mind in two cities. He talks in his sleep and it sounds like "stay", which is unfair, because sleeping men cannot be argued with. She flips a coin for the answer. It rolls under the dresser and keeps rolling, perhaps to this day. Peut-être is the only honest word the night has left.

Avant l'aube

Whatever the coin decided, the dress is found, the floor forgives her footsteps, and the stairwell keeps her secret. She leaves the way perfume leaves a coat: slowly, and not entirely. Adieu is a hard word in French. It does not mean see you later. It means the door has learned her name and will not say it again.

Le matin

And then the city, rinsed and golden. The Seine takes the night downstream, the cafés put their chairs out, and a woman walks home with her heels singing on the stone. She is not sorry and she is not sad. Some loves are built for years; this one was built for one night, and it was built well. Lumière. Bonjour, Paris.

Five songs, one night. Hear how it sounds on the album page, or read every word in the lyrics.