La Patère Rose – La Patère Rose
It's the debut (and I believe only) LP from a Quebecois three-piece. I saw them live in Trafalgar Square, London last summer, and discovered that they recently split up. The band's sound is somewhat hard to pinpoint, and my opinion describing bands in terms of other bands (e.g. "if Judas Priest met Britney at a party hosted by Blur, with Gary Numan providing the drinks") is that it can produce meaningless results. However, if I had to, I'd say: imagine Thomas Tantrum, but replace the guitars with pianos and keyboards, and reverse the English-to-French lyrics ratio.
I really like it. I obviously can't comment on the quality of the lyrics (not being able to speak French and all), and naturally if people hear you listening to French music they'll immediately think you're a pretentious arty type, but I maintain it's fine because they're Canadian. Those things aside, the instrumentation is sweet, the tunes are catchy but not cheesy, and there are odd moments of quirkiness (the cross-rhythmic chorus of PaceMaker, for instance) that just make it such a pleasant listen.
A downside is that the cheapest way of buying the album is to order it from Canada, which still isn't cheap, and takes a few weeks, but you can download it from various reputable outlets, and the album is available on Spotify. Splendid.
j.r.
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