Josianne Boivin—the woman behind MUNYA—isn’t particularly alien. A Canadian with a background in opera and a Parisian instinct for delicate production, Boivin is the image of a musical cool girl: gifted in aesthetics (she draws most of her album covers), bittersweet in her lyrics, elegant in her floaty synths. The most unearthly thing about her is probably her fascination with Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX, a theme her debut full-length, Voyage to Mars, tucks between its chiffon layers like an odd, precious egg.
This reference hangs around like an ugly cousin, but it’s impossible to ignore completely. It’s in the title, a rose for Musk’s purported mission to bring humanity to Mars. It’s in many of the songs, which cover sci-fi-adjacent territory like aliens, moons, and Boca Chica, Texas, where the SpaceX launch site is located. Regardless of your interest in these topics, it’s not exactly a great time to be a French Canadian musician with Musk tendencies. Thankfully, Voyage to Mars avoids the Twitter antics and the billionaire propagandizing in favor of the simple admission that, hey, space is pretty cool.
As sugary soft pop, Boivin’s songs make convincing invitations to roll your shoulders back and take a dip. “Cocoa Beach” cycles through melodic guitars and basslines with the soft, lazy glitter of snow. Boivin’s voice, mellow and good for telling a fairytale, swishes through watery riffs on an understated cover of the Smashing Pumpkins’ “Tonight, Tonight.” The orange-peeled guitar of “Voyage” calls back to 2010s indie pop-rock (think Two Door Cinema Club), but encased in a cloud of drowsy, SoundCloud-esque reverb, it doesn’t sound so dated. Boivin’s lonely disco, lo-fi aesthetic, and Quebecois intonation make a perfect backdrop for sleepy introspection about the planet and your place on it.
But despite the prominent space motif, Voyage to Mars is mostly content to explore the weirdness of our current existence, working through typically earthly concerns like listlessness, boredom, and romantic dissatisfaction. Boivin constructs swirling vocal layers, wrestling herself with teary ahs on the breathless “Pour Toi” and the lovesick “Captain Ron,” where she sounds like she’s sleepwalking as she begs a lost love to “show me the light so I can find my way.” On “Perfect Day,” a banal observation feels restless: “Two by two/How do we make it through?” she asks, urging you to reconsider the basics of human companionship against a curl of custardy guitars.
This sort of emotional quandary can’t be resolved by imaginary trips to the moon or rendezvous with aliens, though it doesn’t seem like Boivin is particularly interested in finding solutions to ennui. The songs are too vague, too gossamer to accomplish that. Instead she throws her displeasure on the table—Here it is, the human condition—to make room for more imaginings. As Boivin dreams for Mars, channeling constant disappointment into momentary entertainment, you might start to think of everything you hold onto when you’re dissatisfied, too.
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