17 NOVEMBER 17-23, 2022 miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com NEW TIMES | CONTENTS | LETTERS | NEWS | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | CAFE | MUSIC | 11/17/22* miaminewtimes.com MIAMI NEW TIMES | CONTENTS | LETTERS | RIPTIDE | METRO | NIGHT+DAY | STAGE | ART | FILM | CAFE | MUSIC | Doctor Feelgood Le Poodle finds inspiration and comfort in her bedroom. BY JOSE D. DURAN E arlier this year, when Natalie Fou- cauld won her Best of Miami as the city’s “Best Pop Act” for her music project Le Poodle, New Times called her out for the long gaps between her releases. But Foucauld has a good reason for it. “I’m like, ‘The tabloids are coming for me!’” she says, laughing about the remark. Music, unfortunately, isn’t Foucauld’s full- time job. In fact, Dr. Foucauld is a board-cer- tified physician assistant who also happens to teach as an assistant professor in medical ed- ucation. “Being an artist was not an option for me,” Foucauld says of her upbringing. Growing up as a second-generation immigrant, she felt the pressure of pursuing a more traditional career path that guaranteed financial stability. While the 31-year-old singer-songwriter is thriving in her medical career, Le Poodle gives her an outlet to express herself creatively. And music isn’t just a mere hobby for her. Foucauld admits to being fascinated by pop songs’ structures and how they work. As a young girl, she idolized pop stars like Britney Spears, Mariah Carey, and Christina Aguilera. Despite her unsteady flow of releases, Foucauld’s latest EP, Opinions From My Bed- room, was conceived well before the pan- demic shut everything down in 2020. And during the lockdown, she found herself writ- ing a lot. (Despite being on-call as a first re- sponder during the pandemic, Foucauld says the state never reached out to her.) “I had to sift through like 160 Abelton ses- sions,” she explains. “Some of them were loops, others were actual songs, and some were just ideas.” With the EP taking three years to complete, “Whales” was the only track Foucauld worked on early on, with the rest of the tracks coming together relatively recently. She attributes that to the writer’s block she suffered while at home. It wasn’t until the beginning of 2022 that she noticed a shift and started to work through the obstacles to complete the project. “At the beginning of this year, there was some shift and I started finishing things,” she says of the record. “I just kept recording and sifting through what I had.” Foucauld also sought input from her closest confidantes to give their honest opinion of the direc- tion she was heading. “I live alone, so some- times it’s hard to have an objective view of your music when you’re just listening to it 24/7.” Foucauld was hop- ing to complete the EP before her appear- ance at III Points last month, but at the same time, she was careful not to feel like she was rushing into things. “It’s a mistake I’ve done in the past: rushing it and not feeling satisfied with what I’m putting out and not having the energy to promote it because I’m already not feeling it,” she adds. Out of the self-imposed deadline came Opinions From My Bedroom, a seven-track of- fering of bedroom pop. Foucauld’s vocal de- livery is still as confident as ever, with the production veering into lo-fi territory with- out sounding like an unfinished demo. High- lights include the sultry “Hold Me Closer,” the folky “Heavyweight Champion,” and the alternative R&B cut “Should We Chill?” The record was self-produced by Foucauld with help from her former Cloud Solo band member Richy B. “Sometimes I would bring [Richy] in the studio to see if he could add any- thing,” she says. “He’s good at everything, but what he’s really good at are piano and guitar.” The EP’s title also came from Foucauld’s isolation from the world during the pan- demic. “It spawned from people being so bold of saying things so casually online,” she ex- plains. “That concept was very interesting to me, how our egos take on this crazy, danger- ous persona because of technology.” For Fou- cauld, people’s audacity online comes from a place of fear and deflection of sitting alone with one’s thoughts. The name also stems from her thoughts of her bedroom serving as a space away from her parents and school. It was the one area where she could expect her privacy to be re- spected and served as a place of both comfort and pain. “[The record] has a lot of themes of heartbreak, introspection, and vulnerability,” she notes. While her day job doesn’t allow her to take her music on the road for an extended period, Foucauld still hopes to do a few more music festival appearances and perhaps travel to the South by Southwest to network. “Honestly, if I do have an opportunity and I’m able to sup- port my life, I would be an artist full-time,” she says. [email protected] ▼ Music Le Poodle plays doctor by day and musician by night. Photo by Yajaira Sattui/@imyajaira “IT’S HARD TO HAVE AN OBJECTIVE VIEW OF YOUR MUSIC WHEN YOU’RE JUST LISTENING TO IT 24/7.”
