Deux Visages

Deux Visages started life in 2019 as a high school dream. Though now based in Philadelphia, they formed in Miami after vocalist Daphney Hanono received a DM from a classmate (and former bandmate), Antoine Lappin, about starting a band. At first it was just the two of them, then they started playing with other people.

It took a few years to find the perfect line-up, during which time they honed their songwriting skills. Then, with the addition of guitarist Jack Chiu and bassist Tony Jouvin, they found the perfect chemistry and the band started in earnest. Call It Goodbye, their stunning debut album on Pure Noise, is the culmination of those years spent perfecting their craft through a string of impressive singles and 2024’s Catch 22 EP.

Recorded in Miami over the course of six weeks in April and May last year by Arquimides ‘Arkii’ Cala—who also recorded the band’s very first single—Call It Goodbye’s 11 songs are the perfect distillation of what makes the trio so special. It’s a record centered around the idea of coming of age, both as people and as a band who signed to Atlantic Records after just a handful of shows, and it bristles with the tension and emotions that come with everything they experienced in that time. The overriding theme, however, is the very visceral experience of grieving your childhood—that duality of trying to hold onto it while also tearing yourself away from it.

The album begins with the beautifully powerful “Disengage”, a dreamy, layered, feedback-filled anthem about a long distance relationship that’s full of regret, anxiety and longing. ‘Take me to the start/Watch it fall apart/And do it all over again’ implores Hanono as the music crashes like violent waves all around her, setting the tone for the journey that follows.

There’s the soaring emotion of “Always You”—imagine a cross between Blonde Redhead, Scarling. and Smashing Pumpkins that starts off tentatively before Hanono’s catchy, pained vocals in the chorus give way to crunching, scathing guitars and a formidable guitar solo—and the urgent rush of “Behind”, which was written in the band’s original practice space in Florida just after they’d signed their first record deal.

Elsewhere, “Afterthought” begins as a tender, vulnerable whisper before bursting into a swathe of gorgeous, euphoric noise. The first song written after the band moved to Philadelphia, it’s the band’s own unique take on the quiet-loud-quiet-loud indie rock song structure, while the dreamy “Fleeting Wishes” begins like an childhood fairytale, all ethereal and delicate, before shattering sonically into a thousand shards of broken innocence. “Paint Myself Blue” is carried by a feeling of despondent disappointment, a series of waves of uncertainty and helplessness—ostensibly about the idea that turning into your parents is inevitable—while the urgent and insistent energy of the title track closes out the album with a tangible sense of frustration at the awareness of how time is always slipping through your fingers.

“I can put my headphones on to that song,” says Jouvin, “lay down flat on my back, and I feel like I’m falling through the sky.”

That’s actually a pretty accurate description of the whole album. It’s a sophisticated yet visceral examination of the conflict between the past and the future—with these songs, Deux Visages are looking back at what’s been, while also confidently leaving that very past behind. That constant tussle is what makes Call It Goodbye so invigorating, so moving, so powerful. It’s present in all these songs, but it’s particularly prevalent on “Always You”, a song that Hanano says was “supposed to be written in a dreamlike state.”

“It’s a cry for somebody that they won’t hear,” she says. “It’s dishing everything out, but it’ll never see the light of day, and that’s just a feeling you have to live with.”

To some extent, that sums up the dichotomy at the heart of Call It Goodbye—it’s a record that works out those contradictions, or at least tries to. Indeed, it wrestles with the ephemeral nature of youth and life (not to mention experiences in the record industry as a young, new band). Indeed, this is an album that sums up that struggle to assert yourself, the growing pains of youth and the instability that comes when everything around you is changing. But also shows that with enough determination and self-belief, it’s possible to push through and make it to the other side more confident, more self-assured and ready to take on the world.

“For a long time,” adds Chiu, “we didn’t know how long the ground we were standing on was going to be there, but I feel like now we know that it will be.”

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