Sabina – Toujours

Another Modern Love Story

Everyone is the star of their own love story. Sabina’s Toujours has a song to be put on all of those soundtracks. Whether you’re just falling in love, have been in love for too long, are in love with someone who’s completely wrong for you, with someone who’s far from you, with someone who has no idea, or are waiting to be in love, at least one of the songs on Toujours will help make sense of everything. Toujours explores the many facets and emotions that have to do with love and reaffirms that love isn’t as simple as a boy and girl falling for each other and starting a family on Long Island.

Toujours, French for “always,” is a theme that plays throughout the album. There’s this feeling that love is the only constant in life. It may not be a positive force, but it certainly is constant. The title track takes elements from Sabina’s electronica background as lead singer of the Brazilian Girls with a screeching, dancey organ, a pronounced bass line, and a driving beat. “Toujours” takes a less-than-inhibited and honest look at monogamy and how it should it be dealt with, where Sabina croons, “We might as well be happy.”

Other songs, like “Mystery River,” consider how persistent love can be: “Nothing can stop me / Not rock, not concrete / Not these narrow Paris streets / Not a buffalo stampede!” This can be terribly romantic or just terrifying, depending on which side of the restraining order you’re standing. The album follows the arc of every flawed relationship. Toujours ends with “I Won’t Let You Break Me” and “Going Home.” These songs produce a feeling that whatever this is, it’s over, and it’s still unclear if it’s final or even if it’s a good thing.

The songs on Toujours are stark, honest, and hopeful. Scratchy guitar licks played over Sabina’s low, at times raspy, multilingual lyrics further the idea that love is something beautiful, though we may not understand every bit of it. So light a long cigarette, grab your partner, dance in your parlor in fancy underwear and fall in love.