Cheveu
Bum
Cheveu built its third LP on the ashes of those unholy hours, around the majestic 'Polonia', a track on which David Lemoine recites a few lines from Bertrand Blier's 'Buffet Froid' with the set expression of a man empowered by the fact he just shit his pants, while Etienne Nicolas and Olivier Demeaux slowly unwind the rapturous scenery of a theologian western. The song is beautiful, grotesque, heart-rending, just like a scene out of Jean Rays Malpertuis backed by a funeral choir of angelwitches, and is definitely one of the most amazing things youll hear this year. 'BUM', just like 'Polonia', is an inner trip, an odyssey bordered by the walls of an antique mansion, full of baroque embroidery and padded club chairs, perfect aural counterpart for the paintings, of Rousseau, master of the exotic which -paradoxically- never ventured out of France. Cheveus third record is full-on excess and absurdity, but is also much more legible and effective than their previous efforts (see 'Juan In A Million' or the sure-fire hit 'Albinos', which lyrics are taken from a monologue in Harmony Korine's 'Gummo'), even traditional at times ('Pirate Bay' seems like the very first Cheveu song where guitars sound like guitars). This time, the band opted for a much more live-based, organic and fully-produced sound, replacing 1000s of messy cut-ups and Cheveus shitgaze blur by throbbing organs (played by Xavier Klaine and recorded at Saint Merri Church) and wall-of-sound choirs (arranged in Tel-Aviv by Maya Dunietz, already in charge of the lush string arrangements on 1000). The result : 10 tracks drier and sharper than anything Cheveu has done before, definitely out-of-this-world but elegantly mannered, veined with unaltered genius and ending with the spectacular 'Johnny Hurry Up', an unreal track which owes Wall Of Voodoo and X as much as Francois de Roubaix and crowns Cheveu as the masters of a new world where love burns over piles of rotting meat and shit.