Steel & Velvet’s new release, People Just Float, is unhurried, intimate, and carved down to only what matters. Built by Breton musicians Johann Le Roux, Romuald Ballet-Baz, and Jean-Alain Larreur, the band has always favored the raw bones of music, with acoustic guitars and a voice that doesn’t hide behind anything. Their latest work doubles as both a six-track EP and a dreamlike short film, telling the story of Joshua, a solitary man in the woods whose world shifts when he discovers a frightened woman. It plays like a folk-western told in smoke and silence, where every note feels like it’s been carried across long distances.
The record opens with “Orphan’s Lament,” adapted from Robbie Basho’s original. Here, Romuald’s guitar glitters like frost on wood, and every pluck is clean but weighted. Johann sings with a full-throated baritone, which is operatic in shape yet raw at the edges. There’s only feeling that rises and falls naturally, like breath. It pulls you into that cabin with Joshua, into the cold, into the quiet.
Later comes “Silver,” where Johann’s deep tone intertwines with his daughter Jade’s gentler, softer voice. The duet plays like two ghosts calling out across the same valley, one grounded, one almost floating. The guitars shimmer with their steelly glint as if the emotion itself is what’s meant to stand bare.
By the final track, “In Heaven,” Jade takes the lead. Her voice moves lightly, almost translucent, repeating “In Heaven, everything is fine,” in a tone that feels both comforting and unsettling.
People Just Float simply sits beside you, quiet and steady, and lets its truth unfold—one breath, one chord, one story at a time.
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Review by: Naomi Joan