Ten years is a long time to leave a story unfinished- but ‘Rêverie’, The Young Liars’ first release since 2015’s ‘Rue Massena’, feels less like a comeback and more like a resurfacing. The Jakarta indie rock quartet haven’t returned to chase past glories; they’ve returned to inhabit a different tempo entirely, one where tension, space, and groove are the main storytellers.
The track begins with a modest drum loop, a skeletal pattern recorded in 2017 that slowly gathers flesh- a looping bassline that lingers just shy of resolution, guitar lines that enter like fragments of memory, sharp but cinematic. Each element is economical, almost ascetic, yet the atmosphere feels rich. It’s as if the band has learned to let silence do some of the speaking.
The vocals, sung in both English and French, hint at something personal without drawing its full outline. There’s not coldness, but a deliberate holding back, letting the emotional weight seep through cracks rather than spilling in torrents. The result is intimate yet elusive, like overhearing someone else’s dream and recognising pieces of your own in it.
What’s most striking is how Rêverie sidesteps the easy narrative of “band returns after long break” and instead treats its own absence as part of the art. The years in between aren’t glossed over- you can hear them in the unhurried pacing, in the way every note feels carefully placed, in the lingering sense that this song has been turning over in the band’s collective mind for far longer than it’s been in our ears. It’s less a fresh start than an echo finally reaching us, and that echo carries both the weight of what’s passed and the thrill of what might come next.