Paris-born pop duo Pearl & The Oysters are saying goodbye to Florida and hello to California.
The band, made up of musicians Juliette Davis and Joachim Polack, will be performing a farewell party Nov. 16 at The Wooly in light of their upcoming move to Los Angeles, where the two will be pursuing greater opportunities for their musical careers.
The farewell party will be presented by Tonight’s the Night GNV, featuring fellow local bands Room Thirteen, Edmondson and The Dewars. Tickets are available on Showclix for $7 and doors open at 8 p.m. with the music beginning at 9 p.m.
The duo first came to Gainesville nearly four years ago, when Polack decided to attend UF for his doctorate. Davis followed Polack to Florida, having met him in high school. They shared similar passions for music and began producing and performing music as Pearl & The Oysters after arriving in Gainesville.
Pearl & The Oysters have released two albums since beginning their careers. They released their self-titled debut album in 2017 and their second album, “Canned Music,” shortly after in 2018. Their third album, the name yet to be revealed, will conclude what they call their “Florida trilogy.”
The band, which features a nostalgic ‘60s and ‘70s pop sound, tries to capture the landscape of Florida with their music, Davis said.
“There’s a lot of synthesizers that are actually imitating the sounds of nature,” Davis said. “Florida, particularly North Florida, was also quite an influence for our sound.”
The duo’s move to Los Angeles is the next step in their musical career, as the band hopes to do more tours, reach a larger audience and hopefully take part in some collaborations.
Polack, who hopes to complete his dissertation this coming fall, hopes that the new landscape will help the band reach professional heights.
“I think it could become a more legitimate thing,” Polack said. “I think it would be nice to be able to experience this atmosphere of music being concentrated in a sort of Mecca, and let that push us to try to be better.”
As a band so heavily influenced by their environment, Pearl & The Oysters said they’re not sure how California will manifest itself in their sound.
“It will be our ecosystem,” Davis said. “Maybe we’ll stay in Florida in our hearts.”
Polack and Davis said the Gainesville community is the best audience in the world, and the duo expects saying goodbye will be deeply emotional.
“[Gainesville] has been very special, and very unexpected,” Polack said. “We came from a place in France where we didn’t feel that relevant and that adequate to the music scene, and Florida really made us feel like what we were doing mattered and touched people.”
Pearl & The Oysters are leaving behind the Florida swamps for Los Angeles, where the Paris-born duo plans to pursue more musical opportunities for the band.
