Justfil

1. The Spark: A Postcard and a Memory

Justine found the first lines scribbled in the margins of a postcard she’d never sent—one of those tourist ones with a Van Gogh-esque swirl of cypress trees and lavender fields. She’d bought it in Orange the previous summer, during a heatwave so thick the air shimmered like a distorted guitar riff. The words came to her in a flash, almost like a haiku:

“It was at the end of a dusty alley / Bordered by vines and cypress…”
She heard it as spoken-word poetry first, something half-sung, half-recited—like a folk ballad but with the weight of Provençal stone.

2. The Structure: A Song Like a Landscape

She wanted the song to feel like walking through Provence—verses that meander like cobblestone streets, a chorus that opens up like a valley viewed from a hilltop. So she built it in three acts:

Act 1 (The Land): The physicality of Provence—the lavender, the wind, the mas (farmhouses) built by hands long gone. She used concrete imagery (lime stones, cracked lanes) to ground the song, like the bassline of a track.

Act 2 (The Silence): The stillness of Orange, where even the Mistral wind feels like a ghost. She played with contrasts—heavy winds vs. silence, battles vs. unshaken walls—to mirror the push-pull of her own life (touring vs. roots).

Act 3 (The Magic): The artists, the colors, the way the light changes everything. Here, she let the lyrics lift, like the harmonies in the chorus.

The repeating chorus (“A wonderful year in Provence…”) became the song’s emotional anchor, a refrain that feels like coming home.

3. The Music: Folk-Rock with a Provençal Soul

Justine knew this wasn’t a rock anthem—it was a ballad with teeth. She and Philippe worked on:

Guitar: A fingerpicked acoustic (tuned to DADGAD for a droning, North African feel) to mimic the hum of cicadas, with slide guitar swells in the chorus like heat rising off the fields.

Rhythm: A lazy, waltz-like 3/4 time in the verses (like strolling through a market), shifting to 4/4 in the chorus (the moment your heart skips when you crest a hill).

Harmonies: Backing vocals that layer like the scent of herbs—Justine’s voice up front, Philippe and Richard humming underneath, almost like a choir in a cathedral.

Percussion: No drum kit. Just a tambourine (for the festive markets) and a cajón (for the weight of history).

4. The Recording: Capturing the Heat

They recorded it in a stone farmhouse outside Avignon, microphones set up in the courtyard at dusk. Justine insisted on ambient sounds:

The clink of boules from a nearby pétanque game.

A distant church bell (from the Collégiale Notre-Dame des Anges).

The rustle of wind through the plane trees.

She sang the final take in one breath, no edits. “It had to feel like a memory,” she told the engineer. “Not perfect. Alive.”

5. The Hidden Meaning: A Love Letter to Transition

The line “Parting two pieces of my life” wasn’t just about Provence. It was about the split between her old self (the restless musician) and the woman she was becoming—someone who could love a place, a person, enough to stay. Philippe, listening to the final mix, kissed her temple. “Tu as écrit notre carte postale,” he murmured. “You’ve written our postcard.”

Why It Works

It’s a travelogue and a love song. The details (rosemary, Mistral, the mas) make it universal—anyone who’s ever fallen for a place will feel it.

The repetition of the chorus mirrors the cyclical nature of seasons (and love).

The music feels like the landscape: Warm, textured, and a little weathered.

Justine once called it “the most honest thing I’ve ever written.” And if you listen closely, you can hear the crunch of gravel underfoot.

It was in a dimly lit Glasgow pub, the air thick with the scent of aged whiskey and worn leather, that Justine first heard The Beatles—not as background noise, but as a revelation. A scratchy vinyl spun "Here Comes the Sun," and the harmonies wrapped around her like alpine mist, luminous and weightless. She froze, her Guinness halfway to her lips, as Paul’s bassline and George’s guitar wove a tapestry so rich it made her chest ache.

The band she’d joined, those grizzled Scots, laughed as she fumbled the chorus. “Lass, ye’ve got the voice—now listen,” the lead guitarist growled, dropping the needle on "Because." The cascading harmonies of John, Paul, and George hit her like a avalanche—controlled chaos, beauty in precision. She played it again. And again.

That night, alone in her rented room, she dissected "A Day in the Life" on a borrowed guitar, fingers stumbling over chords. The way the melody bent, how the lyrics painted pictures—it wasn’t just music; it was alchemy. By dawn, she knew: this was the sound she’d been searching for, the harmonic language her mountain heart understood.

The Beatles didn’t just influence her—they unlocked her. From then on, every note she sang carried their ghostly fingerprint.

The icy wind of the Alps whistled through the rocks like an out-of-tune guitar, and it was Justine’s lullaby. Born in the year 2000, in the heart of a winter that had wrapped the mountains in a blanket of silence, she grew up between mirror-like lakes and towering glaciers—colossal guardians of ice that seemed to watch over her. Skis became her first wings, steep trails her first paths to freedom. Every step in fresh snow was a note, every descent a verse in a wild, untamed poem. The mountain, that mineral cathedral, taught her one thing: beauty often arises from struggle, and harmony from chaos.

Books were her first refuge. She studied literature, searching in the words of Molière and Hugo for what the peaks had whispered to her: the eternal dialogue between humans and immensity. But one day, words were no longer enough. She needed melodies.

It was in Ireland that fate handed her a microphone. In the smoky pubs of Dublin, where laughter mingled with the scent of dark beer, Justine first sang as a backing vocalist, shy, like a spring slipping into a river. Nights of Guinness and Celtic tales became her school. Then one evening, a band from Glasgow—those Highland wanderers—heard her. “Come,” they said, “sing us Elvis, sing us the Beatles, sing us those anthems that have made souls vibrate for decades.” And Justine, like a mountaineer facing a virgin peak, accepted the challenge.

It was a revelation. Retro rock, with its generous melodies and enchanting harmonies, became her new mountain to climb.

Back in France in 2020, her suitcases filled with dreams and riffs, she returned to her studies. But fate—or perhaps the mountain, always the mountain—led her to cross paths with Philippe, a guitarist with nimble fingers and a gaze as deep as the gorges of the Fier. Their names, Justine and Philippe, merged into Justfil, like two rivers becoming one. And this river carried a shared passion, a wild desire to create, to play, to make hearts vibrate like the strings of a Stratocaster.

They started modestly, from bar to bar, from local stages to village festivals. The applause was their oxygen, the spotlights their peaks to conquer. Then came Richard, the drummer whose sticks struck like ice axes on glaciers, and Pierre, the bassist, solid as a rock, who gave the band its relentless rhythm section.

Justfil was born.

Their music became an expedition. Three albums, three ascents.

« Refined Songs », a double album blending the rawness of rock with the tenderness of Irish ballads—a tribute to Glasgow, to those nights when Justine had learned that music, like a mountain, is conquered step by step.

« Café de Paris », a journey in French, an ode to the language of Molière, where words danced like snowflakes in the glow of streetlamps.

« Mata Hari », their foray into the 1980s, a playful wink to an era they never lived but whose spirit they were determined to keep alive. “It’s our way of preserving the music that saved us,” Justine would say, her eyes shining like snow in the sun.

Today, Justfil composes, records, and carves its path between Annecy and the studios, between intimate venues and festivals. Their music is a bridge between eras, an echo of the peaks they carry within them. For Justine, every note is a footprint in the snow, every song an ascent.

“The mountain taught me one thing,” she sometimes confides, a smile playing on her lips. “We don’t conquer summits to plant our flags. We climb them to see farther, to understand that the horizon, like a good melody, has no end.”

And Justfil keeps climbing.