Animal Triste

Here’s what’s called a supergroup. Understand that its members all have a more or less glorious past in other bands. Starting with Yannick and Sébastien, respectively singer and guitarist from la Maison Tellier. The other 4, living in Rouen as well, played in Radiosofa (whom the snoopers amongst us remember their "10,000 Brasses"), in Darko and in Dallas. Mix these universes and you get a new band, named from the Latin locution "post coitum animal triste" and from the film entitled this way too.

Hold on, it’s gonna shake. This album isn’t very immediate, except "Shake Shake Shake" – and "Dancing in the Dark", because it’s known already. Yet there’s a good rock crux, nothing genuinely weird or disturbing, no, but it takes time all the same. To tame the beast. The atmosphere. Its big full sound, with a great deal of heavy guitars and twilight chords. The hammering drums which crush everything on their way ("Darkette", "Out of Luck").

Even though it rocks, the Springsteen cover, rid of its original very 80’s attributes, is a surprise in here... unless they mostly wanted to add to the album a track with the word 'dark' (besides "Darkette")? By the way, even when the word 'dark' isn’t in the title... it’s in the lyrics ("Wild at Heart", "Sky is Something New")! I think you got the idea.

For, apart from a welcome pop rest ("Amor Bay"), the whole thing carries a dark rock mark, the top in my eyes being the striking "Sky is Something New" – which I’d imagine well in Rover’s mouth. “I never met a girl like you, I never knew I could meet somebody like you.” The refrain is known. After “I've never known a girl like you before”, the fleeting Edwyn Collins hit, after the racy and timeless “I never dreamed that I'd meet somebody like you” by Chris Isaak, meeting the unexpected girl still fascinates. That gives a soul to this assembly-band. A super band.