Puts Marie - Pigeons, Politicians & Pinups during the End Time of Mankind

It is easy to speak of commercial suicide here. A suicide by gunfire. Like the one that went through the window, on the cover.
In 2024, releasing an album like this is suicidal. Only 6 tracks, which deliciously give the Vs to trends and usage formats, whether they are imposed by radio or the Internet. We will come back to this.

Suicidal too, this long title. I challenge you to memorize it. However, it achieves the right synthesis of the themes addressed. Should we deduce that the end of humanity would be divided into 3 groups: pigeons, pin-ups and politicians? Damn, I don't recognize myself in any of the 3.

Suicidal finally, the total absence of this album on the major online listening platforms, in favor of Bandcamp alone.

We had stuck with Catching Bad Temper, a good album in itself, but maybe a little too marked by hip-hop wanderings to satisfy me completely. What has happened since then? Nick Porsche threw in the towel, at the same time as the drumsticks, giving himself just enough time to record a very pictorial solo album. Without him, Puts Marie held on and released 2 tracks twice, including the sublime "A Boy Called Monkey" (2019), already suggesting the color of this new opus.

On the intro of "Robber's Daughter", I tell myself that in terms of jerky rhythm I may not have known anything so exciting since the intro of "Disintegration" by Cure (I'm talking about the track).
The text teaches us that the robber's daughter is a robber too, at only 5 years old.
And what a bass, on this track! It is also remarkable in other places in the record. A novelty because, from memory, it was not as much the case in the music of the rock quintet before. Igor Stepniewski – this name too, I challenge you to memorize it or spell it correctly – did a good job.

Surprise! A voice other than Max Usata's on a Puts Marie album! That of the singer and experimental artist Rea Dubach, in the twilight "Hotel Asylum" and its creaking door. Right of asylum or asylum for the insane? The place, in bad shape, is perhaps a bit of both.

From "Cicciolina and the Clerks" I really like the initial part where Max’s voice goes into the high notes, but the desperate declamatory part spoils this piece a lot, in my opinion, and the instrumental ending, rather good, is not enough to save it.
This Roman episode is not enough though to disqualify an album that is all in all homogeneous. Quite the contrary. Like the flight of the bird ("Bird Breeding Man"), Puts Marie's music always succeeds in finding the right direction. Probably by magnetoreception as well. Commercial suicide certainly, but total artistic success.