Camille Camille – Enchanted Sea
There are artists who write songs, and then there are artists who build worlds. Camille Willemart — the Belgian singer-songwriter performing as Camille Camille — has always belonged to the second camp. With Enchanted Sea, her second full-length album due May 29th via Labelman, she moves further into that world-building impulse, arriving somewhere more cinematic, more expansive, and ultimately more assured than anything she has released before.
The album follows her 2021 debut Could You Lend Me Your Eyes, a record that announced her as a genuinely distinctive voice in the European folk scene — understated where others were ornate, emotionally precise where others reached for grandeur. That debut earned her spots on tour with King Hannah, Widowspeak, and Kurt Vile, and a quiet but dedicated following that has been waiting for this follow-up ever since. Enchanted Sea does not disappoint.
From Home Studio to the Open Sea
The album was largely recorded and produced at Willemart’s home before being completed at producer Michiel Renson’s studio — a process that gives Enchanted Sea its particular texture: intimate in its foundations, but never claustrophobic. She was joined by a small circle of collaborators: Felix Baele on bass, charango, and backing vocals, and brothers Orlan and Abel Ghekiere on drums, clarinet, harmonium, and guitar. The result is an eclectic collection of songs that each carry their own sonic atmosphere, stitched together with the care of a handmade quilt.
Willemart has described the recording process as unfolding across different times and places, which explains why the album resists easy categorisation. Folk is the obvious starting point — her guitar work remains central, and her voice still carries that fragile, grounding quality that drew comparisons to Josephine Foster and Robbie Basho. But Enchanted Sea reaches further, incorporating flute, piano, charango, and what she calls a more cinematic sensibility. The album’s themes are correspondingly large: adulthood, freedom, responsibility, the immensity of nature, the infinite fragility of love.
“I wanted to bring to life the full sonic landscape I long envisioned and reconnected with old friends — the flute and piano — along the way.”
The Singles So Far
Two tracks have been released ahead of the album, and together they map out the record’s emotional range. “In a Song,” released in February, established the album’s quieter, more introspective end — a slow-burning piece built around restraint and carefully placed space. Then came “J’ai Rêvé,” which arrived as a genuine surprise: the first song Willemart has released in French, her mother tongue.
It is a sailor’s ballad in the oldest sense — a woman on the shore, longing for a distant lover, holding onto hope across time and space. Willemart has spoken of writing the song during a long-distance relationship, reaching for it during a period of uncertainty where hope was the only solid ground. What makes it remarkable is what happened in the studio: a song originally conceived as melancholy transformed, through the addition of marching drum patterns and flute, into something joyful and hymn-like. The video, directed in collaboration with Madrid-based visual artist Elisa Soto, amplifies that bittersweet duality. It is one of the most quietly arresting folk singles in recent memory.
Why It Matters
The European folk scene has no shortage of talented singer-songwriters making careful, personal records. What sets Camille Camille apart is the quality of her attention — to melody, to language, to the precise emotional weight of a single note held a beat longer than expected. Enchanted Sea is the record of an artist who has spent the years since her debut not searching for a bigger sound, but for a truer one.
The tracklist — ten songs including “Bottle Song,” “Le Vent,” “Dove or the Devil,” “Saga’s Lullaby,” and the title track itself — suggests an album designed to be heard in one sitting, from beginning to end. In an era that rewards the single above everything else, that is its own kind of quiet defiance.
Final Thoughts
Enchanted Sea arrives May 29th, and it arrives with the weight of a record that has been made with genuine patience and conviction. Camille Camille is not chasing anything. She is doing something rarer — she is building a body of work, song by song, on her own terms. Pay attention.
- Standout singles: “J’ai Rêvé,” “In a Song”
- Release date: May 29, 2026
- Label: Labelman
- For fans of: Josephine Foster, Aldous Harding, Marissa Nadler