Housse De Racket : 'Synthetiseur'
Released: Out Now
Label: 50 Bones
Housse de Racket are, somewhat predictably, French. Unfortunately for them that means not only are all Irish people going to immediately disregard them but this reviewer is going to compare them rightly or wrongly to two of the greats of music – Air and Jacques Brel. If you’re not familiar with Monsieur Brel I give you permission to pause reading for five minutes, open up a new tab and You Tube his French-self. Then you’ll see why Housse de Racket are going to have to impress me if I’m to add them to the ‘French stuff’ play list on iTunes. Any band worthy of touring with Does It Offend You, Yeah? must be worthy of my ear at the very least though, so here goes with their two-track CD.
First is ‘Synthetiseur’ – my computer is being playful and won’t let me translate that, but I think we can all safely assume what it means, especially when after five seconds it becomes eminently apparent that this lot do like their computer sounds. The start of this song actually sounds like it might be the start of Flash Gordon which got me listening straight away, and just like that fantastic 1980’s classic staring Brian Blessed this song doesn’t pause for breath for a second. I’d love to give you a direct literal translation of the lyrics (credit due to them by the way for sticking to the native tongue like Brel and, often, Air) but unfortunately my GCSE French course stretched only as far as enabling me to identify my pets and spell out my name, because of course without that tool our French cousins would’ve been stuck forever trying to work out how to spell B-E-N. Anyway I’m getting far too nostalgic, lets stick to the music – the drums are excellent, they sound half like the drums of a man behind a kit and half like a computer generated substitute, a perfect balance if you ask me, and the vocals also switch seamlessly between auto-tuned computer sounds and straight up, sultry French vocals. I prefer the latter, but the blend really works, especially on the chorus where the computer generated version tees up the real life stuff dramatically, assisted by a three-chord guitar hook that could’ve been written by Queen. In fact, is there a remake of Flash Gordon due? If there is, I’m pretty sure these guys are pre-empting it and putting a case forward to make the soundtrack. And they’d be thoroughly deserving on the evidence of this three-minute-odd electro-pop dance song. Their paperwork suggests they might be better live too, in which case if you want to see dance-drama played out before your eyes why not step along to a gig and see if the hype matches the output? I fancy that it just might.
Track two is equally as easy to translate, at least the title ‘Sur Le Papier’ is. That means on the paper right? Knew I went to school for a reason. This one starts dramatically too, thumping drums and an acoustic sounding guitar strumming through three chords once more. It lacks the dance panache of the first song but it doesn’t feel like it’s meant to sound anything like it and, on that front, the band have succeeded. This is almost surreal, it’s like an 80’s Eurovision entry and without being able to tell you much of what they’re saying I can’t help but be slightly disappointed by this – it’s weak in presence and originality and completely ignores all the good work done in ‘Synthetiseur’, feeling like a step back for a band that should surely be capitalising on their quite obvious strengths.
The first track is fantastic, the second is seriously underwhelming, but it doesn’t temper my enthusiasm for finding out more about this band. At times a very, very promising start.
Trés bien.
7/10
Words: Benjamin Coley
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Reply #1 on : Wed July 13, 2011, 07:17:07