Malajube - Trompe L'Oeil

Malajube are a band from the ridiculously prolific city of Montreal. The cultural melting pot that brought you, amongst others, The Dears, Stars, A Silver Mt. Zion, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, The Stills and of course Arcade Fire (but perversely not Of Montreal) over the last few years has yet another one up its sleeve. Do they do anything there but form bands?

However, unlike most of their better known fellow Quebecers (with the notable exception of Les Georges Leningrad) this five piece sings in French, giving me a great chance to find out just what I remember from my A-Level French. It turns out not much. While I don’t have much of a clue as to what they have to say, I can certainly have a stab at what they sound like.

Like their more esteemed city-mates Arcade Fire, they sound like a band that is really enjoying themselves. After a brief introduction, they launch into a trio of melodic but eccentric indie rock. ‘Montreal -40°C’ sounds like the Flaming Lips singing a French language cover of the Scissor Sisters, ploughing a similar furrow as the equally poppy ‘Pâte Filo’. ‘Le Crabe’ shows off more of a traditional garage rock sound but retains a certain leftfield Canadian aesthetic thanks largely to Julien Mineau’s breathy vocals. Throughout the album they serve to add another layer to songs that for the most part already have considerable depth. In fact it is surprising to note that Malajube have only 5 members since for much of the album their sound has something of the grandeur and gravity of a larger collective.

This North American lo-fi indie rock sound is hammered home with ‘La Monogamie’s quiet/loud Modest Mouse sound, but, having got your attention through the tried and tested method of pop melodies up front, the middle of the album is where Malajube do their experimenting. ‘Ton Plat Favori’ is a bouncy keyboard led bar room sing a long and ‘La Russe’ is 2 minutes of crazy rap/spoken word/100 miles an hour vocals backed by unsettling trance keyboards.

It is previous single ‘Fille A Plumes’, though, that is undoubtedly the centrepiece of the album. Effects-drenched vocals shout and soar over industrial drums, heavy guitars and synth, flitting between the blissed out and angry. ‘Casse-cou’ too displays a similar musical schizophrenia, contrasting lullaby with nightmare, and in the course of these two songs we get a glimpse of what Malajube sound like when they get it just right. The album ends on a rather damper note, though, as both ‘Étienne D’Août’ and ‘St Fortunat’ are more predictable, decent, lo-fi ballads, the former with conventional sweeping strings.

‘Trompe L’oeil’ is a perfectly pleasant, somewhat enjoyable listen, particularly given the relative paucity of French language bands. Despite a rather inauspicious start and finish to the album, the middle develops into something really interesting, with both ‘Fille A Plumes’ and ‘Casse-cou’ really standing out. At their most upbeat they have the same quirky indie guitar pop sensibility as The Flaming Lips or Super Furry Animals, while at the other end of the spectrum they hint at the experimentalism of a Sonic Youth. However, they just don’t quite manage to convincigly pull off either and with the amount of bands around that sound a bit like them, Malajube just don’t do enough to stand out.

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First published on www.rockfeedback.com. See it here.