Who says dusk has to come before the dawn? The second and sensational installment of St. Lucia’s Fata Morgana diptych is the latest satisfyingly surprising left turn from the long-running alt-pop project, flipping the lush and ornate instrumentation of its predecessor Dawn on its head with sleek dance beats and the kind of grooves that only arrive after dark. Drawing heavily from bandmates Jean-Philip Grobler and Patti Beranek’s love of vintage, velvety disco and the addictive breakbeats of ‘90s electronic music, Dusk is an electric shock to the system that also never loses sight of what’s made this band so beloved in the first place.

You already know that Dusk is the sequel to this year’s Fata Morgana: Dawn, but its actual creative genesis timeline-wise is a bit tricky. While Dawn was actually largely completed before St. Lucia’s fourth record Utopia in 2022, the material collected on Dusk actually draws from the entirety of St. Lucia’s career, including the sessions that resulted in Utopia. The gonzo ascending pop of “The Universe Explodes” dates back to 2008—a full five years before the group’s breakout debut When the Night—while the pulsing “People Change” was initially intended for St. Lucia’s third record Hyperion.

On his part, Grobler describes Dusk as “the true follow-up to Utopia,” with work on its 10 songs having been completed after Utopia was put to bed. At first, Dawn and Dusk were to be released as one, before the band decided that it’d be best to separate them into individual statements; “We were writing all this music, and the hardest thing was going back and forth and being like, ‘Do we combine all these songs into one album?’” Grobler recalls. “Then we just realized that it made more sense to separate them into these two worlds.” 

While both records conjure the feeling of looking out to the horizon and seeing what’s to come, Grobler explains that both records “reflect the duality of my musical personality—and, in my mind, Dusk is the extrovert.” Indeed: These songs are bright and bursting with melody even at their most intimate moments, recalling the emotional and surging dance-pop that contemporaries like Cut Copy are well-known for. First single ”Crimes of Passion” is all piano-house chords and slinky disco shake, a co-write with pop duo Aly and AJ that resulted from the same writing sessions that spawned Dawn’s “Campari Lips and Soda.” 

“Some of my favorite years of music were the disco era—undiscovered gems from the late ‘70s and early ‘80s,” Grobler explains while discussing the song’s points of inspiration. Lyrically, the song embraces female empowerment through an unexpected lens: “We came up with this anthem where it's a conversation happening between two people in a relationship—a conversation between two lovers who are in a difficult situation but trying to be mature and honest about it. We wanted it to be plainly spoken without trying to be poetic.”

The rushing anthem “Lights Off” was influenced by ‘90s breakbeat and steers Dusk into more explicitly carnal territory. “The song is about sex, in many ways—It's better with the lights off,” Grobler says. “But it's also about the dream world, the subconscious world. When you fall asleep, you go into this dream space where things just get more interesting.”  The vibrant “Giving It Up,” similar to Daft Punk’s “One More Time,” rests on the titular phrase and tons of all-in-it full-band enthusiasm that’s impossibly infectious: “It felt weirdly cheeky, because we normally just have so many lyrics in our songs,” he explains. “So many of my favorite dance tracks are just one line. If you're used to hearing a band like ours, the repetition can seem a bit jarring—but sometimes dance music benefits from putting people into a trance-like state.”

Then there’s the sneakily personal “People Change,” workshopped for years before being brought to life through an energetic live take that feels like being hit by an oceanic wave. “It took years of adding stuff to it and feeling like we were getting nowhere to realize that the band needed to play in a room together to drift all the unnecessary elements away,” Grobler recounts while discussing the song’s creative genesis, which also lays in addressing the very real and life-long aftereffects of childhood bullying.

“I think everyone in some way was probably a victim of bullying at school—I definitely was,” he says. “Having been bullied, you pass that on to other kids, and I know that those kids suffered from me having done that. I’ve carried that weight with me, so this is my way of coming to terms with that. People can be assholes, but people also change, and there is a way to redeem yourself.”

Dusk feels like a similar point of arrival when it comes to St. Lucia’s journey—a full realization of what the band’s been and where they’re going. “This is the first time we’ve separated the two personalities of St. Lucia into separate records,” Grobler says while reflecting on Fata Morgana’s two halves as well as the future at large. “To me, it feels like we're growing as a project. In a way, it's our act of rebellion to do things to the most maximum level that we can and try to make the best records that we've ever made after all this time.” 

“We're in this for the long haul, and the relationships that form along the way can sometimes be forgotten in this fast-paced world we're living in right now,” bandmate and partner Patti Beranek wisely adds. “We’ve taken everything into our own hands and have gone on this journey that’s taken us to the past and back again.” And Dusk is just the record to send St. Lucia blasting off into a new and thrillingly unexpected future.