My favorite way to review new albums is to do a song-by-song first impression format, "live blog" so to speak. I usually do this on facebook, but I think I'm going to start doing it here instead because it allows me to go into detail without it being a chore due to my less-than-stellar english/composition skills. Writing about music ought to be nothing but fun, especially if it's a hobby and not your day job!
So here we go, let's listen to the new Alcest album.
Wings - The intro, therefor there's not a lot to say here. Some elvish choir shit. Still stuck on the elves, huh? But it builds nicely an if this is setting the tone for the full album, i'm a bit more hopeful than i was.
Opale - This was the teaser. I was not impressed with it. It's pretty upbeat and it has no traces of metal or any kind of heaviness in it at all. I knew that was going to be the case with this album and I had my period of mourning BEFORE hearing the album, and it was nice to get that out of the way and be prepared when the thing actually came out. The thing I love about Alcest's earlier material was the metal aspect. I like shoegaze, not as much as the next guy at this point in time, but it's definitely disappointing to hear one of the more exciting and original metal bands stop being a metal band. Quite frankly, when it comes to shoegaze I only listen to the first 2 Catherine Wheel albums because they've got some weight to them. They're strong and sound passionate whereas with most other shoegaze bands, they have a very indifferent, spaced out vibe and I don't find that appealing. One might argue my love of Spiritualized and they're as indifferent as it comes but there's a dark edge to it because they apathy is a result of heavy drug use instead of just floating around in nowhereland of jingly reverby guitars. I like it when there's a reason for that careless vibe, not just because yo man we're free spirits, ok?
La nuit marche avec moi - Like the last track, this is rather upbeat and it sounds pretty much exactly like one would expect Alcest lite to sound. I will give them much credit for crafting a very recognizable sound.
This song is quite sweet and whistful, neither of which rae my bag. I'm beginning to think I'm not suited to give a fair review of this album, but perhaps I'm best suited to because I love their older stuff so much and am willing to give this a spin. Not every review can end with the writer on their knees with their mouth open, patiently waiting their turn to suck the dick of whatever band they're discussing.
Hard truths! That's what S.O.S is about!
The outro of this track is lovely. It takes an ominous turn, and hopefully this will indicate the vibe of the next song...
Voix Sereine - Nope, more of the same but this is more stripped down. It has a lovely, subtle vocal melody. I'm almost excited about this. It's go ta nice, steady build-up and it actually pays off! That's one of my big peeves in music, when they create anticipation for something big to happen, but do not deliver. This song is probably going to end up my favorite. The fadeout is fantastic. It reminds me a bit of the outro to Isis' Weight. I have a little boner for really great fadeouts. I also can't get through a single article without using the word 'boner'.
L'eveil des muses - This is a little darker than what we've heard so far, therefore I'm pleased. This has a nice weighty beat to it and it's quite danceable which is one of my few complaints about their prior material. It's difficult to dance to and one of my little missions in life is to bring more variety to the goth/industrial scene by strong-arming DJs into playing me off-genre songs. I've had some lucky with it, but most of the time the songs i plead for are not dancey to the masses because the masses are bad at dancing.
Bit I digress, this song is quite nice, but it doesn't feel long enough, it feels incomplete. It ends on a somewhat awkward note as if there was supposed to be another burst of something, but no. Nothing. Otherwise, this is another quite good song that has potential to be my favorite.
Shelter - Ah, the title track... We're moving back to laying in the fields of flowers watching clouds drift past and being beautiful and ethereal and and not having hayfever or getting bugs in our underwear and we have not stumbled into patches of poison oak on the way here. Look out our lovely wicker basket of fine cheese and wine. Look at our hair, gently moving with the breeze. Nobody is getting greasy or sunburnt, and there is a fox curled up with a deer next to us.
EH. I'm just not into this kind of atmosphere.
Away - This is starting out quite promising. Neil Halstead of Slowdive is on guest vocals here, and I'm sure Neige was peeing in his jeans, being in the studio with him. He seems to own just one t shirt, and it's a Slowdive one. I must admit that the lower, more masculine tone of his voice grounds the music a little and I like that. It sounds like Neige come in to sing along toward the end and their voices sound very good together.
This is another stand-out track. It seems just right in structure, it's all-around rather good.
Delivrance - Ah! Finally! A 10 minute epic! One of the things about the older epics is that they tended to have a lot of sections or movements, if you will. They went lots of places and changed thing sup flawlessly. This song stagnates around a hypnotic central sound and doesn't really depart fro it for the duration. While this song doesn't feel like it's 10 minutes, long, it probably didn't need to be 10 minutes long. That said, it IS the final song on the album and it drops off into a string and vocal section that closes the whole thing out quite nicely.
Like I said, I was "getting my hopes down" for this album because I'm so deeply attached to their older, heavier stuff. It's so exciting to hear heavy music, almost black metal, sounding so beautiful and otherworldly. This album didn't disappoint me anywhere NEAR as much as I was expecting it to, but it doens't do it for me the way their prior releases do. It's also a little short, around 40 minutes. I've listened to it nearly 3 times while writing this review! It's also worth noting that I'm absolutely not in the mood for Alcest. I've been listening to a lot of Alice In Chains and early Strapping Young Lad recently and I went to see Author & Punisher play with Phil Anselmo last night and the other openers were boneheaded fast "angry white guy" music (I'll be writing about that next). So jumping right into something like Alcest is kinda jarring!
Also as I mentioned before, Alcest has a rather distinct sound that flows through every one of their albums, save for that first black metal album which they released while still getting their footing and figuring out who they really are. In fact, I think it's more that Neige has a distinct sound because everything he's involved with has a particular tinge to it. Les Discrets, Lantlos (my favorite of the other projects he's involved with), Amesoeurs, they're a genre unto themselves.
I'm not fond of this current shoegaze trend, or of the visuals exemplified by the album art. It's like tumblr.com has come to life and is walking the earth with it's pastel hair and floral boots. Call me a jerk or a South Park goth kid, but I'm not into hype, nor am I into trends. It seems a little weird that Alcest have not really changed their basic sound, but the artwork on Shelter looks like tumblr stock. In the past they've had a distinct and coherent look to their packaging. This is an extremely petty complaint though because I don't actually care at all about the packaging if the content is good. It does somehow seem like some kind of trick to suck people in with trendy images. I cannot fault them for that, because ultimately musicians want to sell albums. It's just a little odd that they would sacrifice their otherwise unique art and fitting style for a silhouette of some hippies standing in front of the sun. I think the reason I even took so much room to discuss this is that I think tumblr-hip stuff is particularly dumb and lacking in soul and personality, I'm using my music blog as a bit of a soapbox for my opinions on other cultural things. My point is that it's not particularly becoming for a group like Alcest to give in and use that sort of imagery. It doesn't do them justice.
It's a little sad to lose them from the arsenal of French metal that's been coming together in recent years because it's producing some of the best new music out there. Gojira, Blut Aus Nord in particular. But hey, I really can't complain because I dislike it when artists never change, stick to a certain formula and keep making the same album over and over because they know it sells (coughDEAFHEAVENcough). So all in all, I'm nowhere near as mad about this album as i expected and that pleases me greatly. I don't give numerical ratings, but maybe I ought to start because this isn't the first time I've said "I don't usually do this but I'd give the album" a 6 out of 10. That is based on the actual quality of the music which is rather high, but tempered by my personal taste and the fact that I'm just not down to hear this kind of thing at the moment. Can I go back to 1995 now please? Thanks.
http://www.alcest-music.com/
http://www.prophecy.de/
