“Sometimes I leave/There I think hard/I meditate”, sings Population II drummer, Pierre-Luc Gratton, in Beautiful baptism. No need to force yourself, however, to be carried away by the psychedelic-astral meditations of the trio’s second album, Free electrons from Quebec.
With To the O Earthits predecessor, Population II revealed an explosive music where the shaggy passion of garage rock fueled the means and ambitions of free jazz, although without always succeeding in translating the bewitchment that the training provokes into a spectacle, moments of trance during which It’s good to drown in noise.
In short: Population II was already the best rock band on stage in Montreal, but was not yet on record. Which is now done.
Back with Emmanuel Éthier directing, Population II draws on space rock (That’s it), psych rock and stoner rock, in hardcore (To Kebec), dirty funk and free jazz. So much so that at times, it’s as if the sinister rascals of Black Sabbath period Master of Reality (Orlando) had entered the studio under the leadership of the prime minister of groove George Clinton or the interstellar jazzman Sun Ra, with Jimmy Hunt with cheeky and cryptic lyrics.
While Sébastien Provençal’s bass often becomes the locomotive of these stays in the land of hypnosis, the drums work with finesse, Gratton being more of a colorist than a nag. Tristan Lacombe undoubtedly remains the hero of this outfit and spits constellations of distortions from his guitar, his swift playing never losing sight of the fact that it is better to bewitch than to throw away.
“At midnight, late at night, everything seems eternal,” murmurs Pierre-Luc in Rapailleand the same goes for the intoxicating effect produced by his group which, when it opens the hatches of its amps to better go into a spin, manages to obliterate all reality in the sovereign eternity of fuzz.
As the other said: long live free Quebec rock!
Excerpt fromOrlando
Psychedelic rock
Free electrons from Quebec
Population II
Bonsound