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.

***

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

The Strange Death Of Liberal England - A Day Another Day

Given that the entire British music press seem united in the opinion that The Arcade Fire are the greatest band in the world, now is a rather opportune time for The Strange Death Of Liberal England to release their first single proper (after a self-released debut limited to 200 copies). For TSDOLE (self-confessed lovers of all things Canadian) approach music making in a similarly grandiose avant-garde melee of orchestration, instrument swapping, screaming and shouting.

The single is to be released on Fantastic Plastic which should come as no surprise seeing as the label’s A&R policy seems to be to hunt out the most bizarrely named bands in Britain. With Help, She Can’t Swim, Guillemots and the Victorian English Gentlemen’s Club already on their roster, The Strange Death Of Liberal England is merely par for the course.

During their live shows TSDOLE raise placards adorned with slogans such as “Repent!” And this exclamatory approach is exactly how their music sounds. ‘A Day Another Day’, despite opening delicately with post rock style arpeggio guitar and strained, impassioned vocals, builds and builds, slowly but surely, into a giant procession of shouted choruses that is related with even more glorious noise than the Polyphonic Spree at their best. It does sound rather Canadian, and you certainly wouldn’t know this band was from Portsmouth, but they pull it off with equal parts aplomb and reckless abandon.

As well as being noisy and passionate, TSDOLE make undoubtedly literary music. ‘A Day Another Day’s most marvellous refrain, the closing “We are Bandini! Arturo Bandini” is inspired by (or at least references) John Fante’s cult hero. Fante’s novels were extremely influential on the work of every “intellectual” rock star’s favourite author Charles Bukowski and his work ‘The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over The Hills’ also seems to be referenced.

There is not much more to be said than that ‘A Day Another Day’ is a fantastic piece of music. TSDOLE seem to have captured on record their alleged live energy, with the song sounding both grandly orchestral and appropriately rough around the edges. If liberal England is indeed dying a strange death, this is a worthy soundtrack to the funeral.

*****

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

Various Artists - Ed Rec Volume 2

Showcasing the best of cutting edge Parisian dance music is a dirty job but I guess somebody’s got to do it. And that’s exactly what Pedro Winter’s Ed Banger Records do. In fact “dirty” is certainly the order of the day in Paris* with the recurring theme on this collection of grimy beats being one of pure filth.

Things have hitting Eiffel Tower-like heights for Ed Banger in the last 12 months, having had a hand in sound-tracking the clubs of 2006 with Justice’s stupidly popular, genre straddling remix of Simian’s ‘Never Be Alone’. Along with the growing reputation and general ubiquity of DJ Mehdi and Uffie in London and beyond and having Levis’ own veteran ornithologist Mr Oizo on board, it is not so much the sound of the underground anymore for Ed Banger, but the sound of the moment.

And so, as if to educate those poor hapless souls who may imagine Ed Banger has something to do with long hair and heavy metal, this collection provides a 45 minute sample of just what it’s all about. There are beats that can be ham-fistedly forced into a variety of pigeon holes within these 14 tracks – electro, crunk, rave, grime and more – but each fits into an overall Ed Banger mould of, for want of a better word, “cool”.

There are, unsurprisingly, tunes throughout. Uffie is up to her usual shenanigans, espousing about crack pipes with her potty mouth on ‘Dismissed’, while the New Ravers will have smiley faces for Mr Flash’s ‘Disco Dynamite’ and SO ME’s KLF style Klaxons mash-up ‘Golden Skans to Interzone’. Alongside cuts from heavyweights Justice and Sebastian (with his soundtrack to a steelworks that is ‘Greel’) and stable-hands including Krazy Baldhead, Feadz and Vicarious Bliss, there is plenty of evidence that Ed Banger is keeping its finger firmly on the pulse. The only “stick out like a sore thumb” moment is the ill-advised 80s disaster that is Mr Flash’s ‘Eagle Eyez’. Thankfully this is a mere sub two minute bridge between industrial-sounding rave tunes and the filth is quickly restored.

In the world of underground dance, it doesn’t get much cooler that Ed Banger Records, and, as with all label samplers this provides a decent overview of what Ed Banger is all about. At 45 minutes, though, it falls somewhere between a proper mix album and a good length compilation and if this is your thing then you’re far better off picking up the individual tracks or albums than the teasers on offer here.

****

*NB At this point I’d like to point out how difficult it was to resist a joke about the French not washing here. I hope you’re all proud of me.


First published on rockfeedback.com. See it here.