The Bernedette Maries – ESO

The Bernadette Maries are a Brussels four-piece named, indirectly, after Sinéad O’Connor: her full name was Sinéad Marie Bernadette O’Connor, and that’s where the band took their cue. Vocalist and guitarist Guy Tournay came to the project after years working as a sound engineer alongside Jessica Pratt, King Dude, and Angel Olsen, having previously sworn off bands after his time in Belgian post-punk group Animal Youth. The Bernadette Maries formed in 2024 and have been touring Belgium, France, and the Netherlands since. “ESO” is their second single ahead of debut album Soft, due September 18th on Géographie.

The track started life as a conventional song: nu-gaze riff, Tournay’s guitar locked in with bassist Daria’s vocals. Then Tournay got bored mixing it and started messing with a drum loop. The second half of “ESO” is essentially a remix of the first, dissolving the shoegaze weight into a liquid drum and bass pulse that lifts the whole thing somewhere else entirely. “The first reaction was ‘Oh, it’s now my favorite song on the album'”, Tournay says. The structural shift isn’t jarring because the two halves share the same emotional temperature: both feel like something half-remembered, slipping.

Soft is out September 18th on Géographie.