After “Please”, Ilajan unveils Les Ronces (Thorns), the first French single from their upcoming album.
The song wraps the listener in a gentle melancholy, while allowing a darker tension to surface. True to their poetic and sensitive songwriting, the two sisters explore a feeling rarely named with such tenderness: anger.
“J’ai dans la gorge des ronces noires, […] sortent de moi comme des flèches dans le cœur de ceux que je blesse.”
“Dark thorns grow in my throat, […] shooting out like arrows into the hearts of those I hurt.”
Here, the words trace the edges of an emotion hard to contain — one that claws from within but that we try (often in vain) to hold back so as not to hurt others. The wordless refrains speak the unspeakable: an overflow seeking another way to be expressed.
The live-recorded strings don’t so much accompany as they reveal, underscoring the buried emotion — that quiet fire kept deep inside. Les Ronces balances delicately between turmoil and tenderness, between what spills over and what is chosen to remain unsaid.
It speaks to those wrestling with the burn and the softness — those who strive, not always successfully, to turn anger into tenderness. A track to be listened to as one might hold something precious in their hands: with care and delicacy.
“Les Ronces” draws inspiration from the poem Les mots rudes (Hard Words) by poet Cécile Coulomb, which deeply moved me from the very first reading and helped put into words feelings and mechanisms I don’t fully understand. Through this song, I offer no solution — I simply try to express the pain of this misunderstood anger, the burden of not knowing where to put it, and the fear of hurting loved ones.”
