You can spend years thinking of yourself as easygoing before it occurs to you how much effort it takes to swallow your anger. Swallow it often enough and eventually it’s the anger that feels out of character, even when you have every reason to be furious. Carl Jung called the parts of ourselves we have trouble recognizing or accepting the shadow. It can hold envy and resentment, but it can also hold an appetite for attention, a talent we were taught to downplay, or the nerve to say when we’ve had enough. Bringing those parts into view means asking how much of what we call our personality began as a way to get along.
On Shadeweaver, Feyleux put that question to a beat you can dance to. Written largely in the winter of 2025–26, their second album for Swiss Dark Nights pairs Laurie Ruroden’s suspended vocal melodies with the bass, guitar, and drum programming that Erica Mauve Gilstrap keeps in motion underneath. That interplay takes shape immediately on “Remote Control.” A kick drum, a melodic synth figure, and a bass pulse set the pace. A guitar note hangs in the air as Ruroden sings about the cost of keeping quiet in a relationship. Early on, she pictures someone stranded out there alone. By the final chorus, the song has found a “we,” and the same beat that drew you in starts to sound like two people making for the door.
The urge to get away carries into “Frailty,” where Ruroden sings about howling at the world one moment and keeping safely out of sight the next. Little shivers of synth pass over soft pads, and the guitar cuts a clean line through them. It’s easy to imagine She Past Away making dream pop and keeping the beat that makes their records so easy to move to. After two songs that draw you in through rhythm, “Grave Moss” eases off the pace. Chiming keys and sighing pads give way to a romantic guitar jangle, with a warm bass melody low in the mix. Ruroden keeps asking whether someone has already passed beyond the veil. At this tempo, you hear the gap between the question and the moment she has to ask it again.
Water offers a hiding place on “Flutter + Fade,” though the metallic gothic-rock bass and firm kick give the reunion an uneasy footing. Icy keys gather above them, then the guitar starts to jangle and Ruroden’s voice lifts through the arrangement. She asks to meet somewhere private, where time stands still, before wondering how much longer the charade can go on. “Detachment” follows with a clean break set to surprisingly tender music. Dreamy synth tones give way to a higher, wavering line, and the vocal has the effect of a duet in places. As the synth and vocal melodies trade prominence, there’s room to hear some wistfulness in the delivery, even when Ruroden’s words leave little room for negotiation.
That sense of resolve gives way to a plunge on “Oubliette.” The opening guitar tones recall The Cure, clear and cold against the sigh of the synths. A sustained bass note and a rippling synth-bass figure bring in the darker vocal, and the arrangement rises and recedes like waves in a subterranean ocean. Even the name of the dungeon carries the threat of being forgotten, which makes the final twist especially sharp. Someone still remembers who’s down there. “Solitary World” takes that isolation in a different direction. It comes straight in with a dark synth-bass beat, and guitar and keys trade figures beneath the ethereal vocal. The chorus gives solitude two meanings at once. You’re left alone with a mind that plays tricks on you, and you get to decide what to do with the power you’ve taken back.
A low, muttering growl and a synth that rolls through the intro like a muffled siren make “Astral Weaver” sound ominous for a few seconds. Then a buoyant drumbeat and bass rhythm take over, and the guitar flutters with the lightness of early Cocteau Twins. The music makes the dream inviting enough that you can see why someone might stay there until it gets hard to leave. “Strawberry Moon” brings that tension out into the open with synth bass, a bright keyboard figure, and a burst of darkwave guitar. Bass guitar settles into a steady pattern as delayed notes skip under one of Ruroden’s catchiest melodies. Where the couple on “Remote Control” danced to get away, the lovers here have slipped away so they can dance together. You can still hear the danger in the guitar, but every return to the chorus makes their night feel a little more like their own.
Shadeweaver is out now via Swiss Dark Nights. Listen below, and order the album here.
Feyleux formed in mid-2023, with Laurie Ruroden on vocals and synths and Erica Mauve Gilstrap on guitar, bass, synths, and programming. The duo released their debut album, Midnight Hearts, through Swiss Dark Nights in 2024 and have since played more than a hundred shows. On their second album, Shadeweaver, they build on the debut’s blend of dream pop and darkwave, bringing ’80s new wave melodies into songs about grief, survival, and the parts of ourselves we learn to hide.
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