New music review with singles from Christine and the Queens and Hallan

Julia Mason aka The Decibel Decoder

4 hours ago

4 min read

Our weekly fix of the best new music as Julia Mason (aka The Decibel Decoder) brings us her new music review with singles from Christine and the Queens Rendez-vous avec toi / Rendez-vous in your arms and Hallan Burning Rome

Artist: Christine and the Queens

Track: Rendez-vous avec toi / Rendez-vous in your arms

Christine and the Queens has released his new single Rendez-vous avec toi/ Rendez-vous in your arms, in French and English, ahead of a short run of intimate shows next month. The single is accompanied by a video shot in Paris, co-directed by Christine and the Queens and Raphaël De Albuquerque, with choreography by Alexander Ekman.

The song and shows open a new era for the artist and offer a first taste of a forthcoming, as yet unannounced, new album, to be released in spring 2027. Rendez-vous avec toi' rides an uptempo, organic disco groove that refuses to let you sit down. It is exultant and luminous - a song about giving in to desire and tenderness, about the night lovers find each other again.

Of the song, Chris says: “I have a rendez-vous with you, tonight. I have obsessed about it since the morning. With the devotion of someone who only waits for you, and the meaning you give to life itself by your mere presence. I’ll come starred with music - the new interstellar traveling of Christine and the Queens, I did it for you. In secrecy of frequencies, in genius musicians, in New York Jazz, in Moroder Groove, I kept on obsessing about this celebration, this big night found again, and I leapt into my dream. Names, boxes, they never defined what we share together. The electricity remains eternally mysterious. We’ll dream together of the blue flower, of this signal that keeps pinging from another planet that we don’t even know of yet; we’ll dream peace, peace with a common story, one way bigger than the one they taught us."

Christine and the Queens has announced a series of intimate shows in Paris, London, Amsterdam and Brussels. Performing with a full band, these shows will feature cult classics and unreleased songs, preparing audiences for a full-scale return. Tickets to all shows are sold out.

Of the shows, Chris shares: “The shows with my audience are the highlights of my life. My musicians - Vincent Taeger, Vincent Taurelle, Adrian Edeline and Karl Onibuje - and I knew we had to reunite with our audience before anything else, in more intimate venues, for a true moment of music played live, felt and shared. We will revisit a repertoire that made us grow together, and give a first listen to unreleased songs from the next album. We revisit, we reinterpret, we remember, and we transcend."

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Artist: Hallan

Track: Burning Rome

Portsmouth four-piece Hallan return with the release of new single Burning Rome and announce UK headline tour dates for 2027, ahead of their forthcoming debut album What's a Heaven For? out through their own imprint, Mystery of Things, on 29 January 2027.

Following the release of their pulsating single Solomon Hallan now turn their attention to Emperor Nero for the next taste of their upcoming album on new single Burning Rome. Continuing the band’s theme of using historical figures and timelines to uncover similarities and draw parallels with modern life, Burning Rome takes the listener through Nero’s actions, soundtracking the fiery moments in which he watched Rome ablaze, focusing on a rotten legacy of ego, greed and lust.

The song focuses on “a character who baffles, intrigues and surprises me to this day,” says frontman Conor. Over a short life, Nero built up a remarkable record of cruelty: a booby-trapped boat meant to drown his own mother, two wives killed, a young slave named Sporus castrated and proclaimed his Empress. After the Great Fire of 64 AD, which many suspected he had started himself, he raised a vast golden palace on the ashes, crowned by a 100-foot bronze statue of himself. Legend has it Nero played his lyre as Rome burned. Hallan picture him somewhere else entirely: lost in his own world, dancing to Basshunter’s Now You’re Gone while the city goes up in flames around him.

Musically, the track carries traces of its origins, with a love of archive voices that recalls Public Service Broadcasting, alongside nods to 2010s Pet Shop Boys and the euphoric 2000s club pop the band grew up with. Somewhere between historical tragedy and a dancefloor that refuses to stop, Burning Rome becomes a soundtrack to the fall of an empire, told by a man too absorbed in himself to notice it burning.

On their upcoming debut album, What’s a Heaven For? Hallan will deliver 12 tracks that take their post-punk sound and expand it across a driving mix of electronics, new wave, art-pop, and club-influenced rhythms, with lyrics drawing from history, politics, religion, and philosophy.