What to listen to through all the new music? Stéphane Plante and Mélissa Pelletier from QUB musique point out 5 essentials!
As worthy heirs of Zappa, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard do not tolerate any structure that would delimit this overflow of sometimes somewhat diffuse flashes. So that after a few listenings of the seven titles of a length oscillating between 6:41 (lava) and 13:27 minutes (Hell’s Itch), it’s hard to remember which song belongs to this or that passage that hooked us. But this possible confusion can also be part of the charm of the experience. Because it is. Give yourself a little time to soak up their many ramblings evoking jazz in passing and of course multiple prog outbursts. In summary: a funky 45-minute long jam with squeaky guitars at strategic moments and a saxophone out of nowhere that completes this dense tableau. And this generous gibelotte in melodies and variations of rhythms comes just five months after the Australian group proposed a double album Omnium Gatherum. It’s like the combo never sleeps! (Stephane Plante)
For this last lap, Lama spreads out his bookish culture to us with great blows of not always subtle allusions to Camus, Homer, Sartre, Shakespeare. Each ambitious rhyme evoking these writers sounds like an insistent request for admission to the French Academy. Despite this somewhat overplayed grandiloquence, the haunting melodies carried by a feverish piano gives us Serge Lama as we have known and loved him. Especially on That’s why I say goodbye to you and You jewel. (Stephane Plante)
memory castle – The Great Dam ***1/2
Intimate, introspective, autumnal… So many epithets that come to mind when listening to this EP from Grand Dam, an indie/folk project by Simon-Pierre Lacasse. With the voices, sometimes hesitant, at the fore in the mix, we bet a lot on the lyricism of this brief epic of five songs. And for good reason, the poetry is up to par. The plank and the bread brings a little rhythm to the whole. And the choirs, even subtle ones, energize the singing. (Stephane Plante)
Far be it from me to fall into the residential metaphor, but the album co-produced with Vincent Legault (Dear Criminals) has many airs of a lair that it is good to discover from room to room. Supported by a softness enriched by the orchestration of the Cassiopée Ensemble, The orphan house is inhabited by amorous torments, pain and the quest for serenity. Without sinking into melancholy, the songs rather manage to rise towards vaporous, luminous tones. And Durand’s laugh closes the album, making it very tempting to go through it again before long. (Melissa Pelletier)
Blue Rev – Alvvays***1/2
It is confirmed from the first listen: the training behind the success Dreams Tonite still has some in it. five years later Antisocialites, Alvvays comes to us with 14 well-typed songs in the indie pop formula that we know him. The result? Well-distorted walls of sound, tinted with urgency after pandemic restraint. A vigor which is also explained by the method used: the songs were recorded directly to be then reworked. Effective yes, but nevertheless difficult to find surprises until the interesting intro of Tom Verlainethe eye-catching Very Online Guy and the most introspective Fourth Figure. (Melissa Pelletier)
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