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Jan 20, 2021 By Mark Redfern

Toronto five-piece Bernice are releasing a new album, Eau De Bonjourno, on March 5, 2021 via Telephone Explosion. Now they have shared another song from it, “It’s Me, Robin,” via a quirky video for the jazzy single. The band’s lead singer is named Robin Dann, which explains the song’s title. Sonia Beckwith directed the amusing video. Watch it below.

NPR’s All Songs Considered premiered the song and Dann had this to say about it to host Bob Boilen: “This song for me, lyrically, was an exercise in trying to be as blunt and transparent as possible with myself. It starts out in a non-poetic way: ‘It’s me, Robin. You don’t really know me. I thought if I just expressed this you might let me be me’—which I think is a universal desire. We all just kind of want to feel permission to exist, unconditionally, not based on any career milestones or whatever personal successes or failures. We want every life to inherently have value. This song, in a really playful way, (referencing ducks and potatoes) addresses the not-so-straightforward feelings that we have in life, but ultimately asks the big question, who are you? We’re all just in this beautiful, endless search for joy.”

Previously Bernice shared Eau De Bonjourno’s first single, “Groove Elation,” which was one of our Songs of the Week.

Eau De Bonjourno is the band’s third full-length, the follow-up to 2018’s eclectically named Puff LP: In the air without a shape. Shahzad Ismaily produced Eau De Bonjourno.

In a previous press release Dann said the album “openly plays with the shape of a pop song.”

Dann added: “We have an impulse to open doors that you might not expect, and that translates from groove to melody to lyric. Phil and Thom have this strong aversion to building a beat that sits there in front of you and does exactly what you expect it to do. We come out of so many musical traditions and are trying to make something that’s not a direct descendent of any of them. We’re trying to make the music that feels like us right now.”

Read our 2018 interview with Bernice here.

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