Monade Monstre Cosmic by: Ed Butler Tue:01-Apr-08 Label: Too Pure Year: 2008 WB rating 71 out of 100

There is a certain school of thought amongst the more pretentious among us that if something comes from France it is inherently more worthy than its US, English or Australian counterparts. Be it food, drink, film or music, these folk argue that the French version is always the epitome of refinement, its English speaking equivalent as sophisticated as a club to the head.

These faux-intellectuals (heretofore referred to as ‘dickheads’) will insist that French culture is superior, despite the mountain of evidence to the contrary (as anyone who has seen Gerard Depardieu’s woeful Asterix and Obelix movies can attest). The same applies to French music. There is always some dickhead who won’t stop raving about the amazing sounds of Air, Daft Punk, Camille and Justice as if they’re the saviours of international popular music. The notion that these august artists may be the only ones good enough to qualify for sales outside their homeland doesn’t seem to occur to them.

So to Monade, the latest interloper to be fawned over by the growing legions of Francophiles as the new exemplars of urbane pop. Originally a side project of Lætitia Sadier, one half of Stereolab, who takes on vocals, guitar, trombone, and that most wonderfully named moog synthesizer, Monade have been producing Gallic avant-pop since 1996, Monstre Cosmic being their third long-player.

And they certainly are French, which could send things either way. Parisian bands tend to fall into one of two categories. Those that shamelessly mine their nation’s musical past, pairing it with the inevitable US/UK influence that have crept into their music scene, creating what is often a fairly bland mélange, and those who adopt a more genuinely cosmopolitan approach, doing their utmost to avoid lazy, nationality-on-sleeve cliché, and allowing only a hint of their traditional sound to creep through. Normally, the finest examples tend towards the latter. Monade are the former.

Sadier is on record as saying she was immersing herself in the works of David Lynch during the recording of Monstre Cosmic, and it shows in the dreamy textures that float across the minor key melodies, the reverie broken up by the occasional lurch into up-tempo ‘60s pop or Latin sounds. And it is these variations that manage to distinguish the Monade sound from Stereolab’s earlier, atmospheric efforts.

And nowhere is that atmosphere more evident than ‘Noir-Noir’, the 53 second opening introduction of gently tinkling piano which leads into the keyboard/organ heavy ‘Etoile’ a track which rather innovatively uses scratchily strummed guitar to add flavour to the rhythm section. It swells, discreetly enough, to a quasi-crescendo, before morphing ever so slightly to a more avant-garde outro, flashes of feedback and discordant keyboard adding colour.

Amusingly, for a band endeavouring to cross the linguistic barrier that has halted so many other legitimately talented acts, the highlight track is ‘Lost Language’, with rhythms that would not feel out of place in a smoky dance hall, a string section lifted straight from either a forgotten ‘70s disco number, or a similar era forgotten French film (about disco); its second-half breakdown employing that tried and true technique of gradually dropping the tempo to more appropriately accommodate Sadier’s electronica-flavoured musings, before returning to the start for the outro.

When things hit snags, however, they’re usually doosies. ‘Tout En Tour Est Un’ is a mid-paced dirge, while ‘Elle Topo’ begins similarly before sharply shifting into overdrive, morphing into a much faster pace. However, the good experimentation clearly outweighs the bad, and when things get more conventional, it gets even better, as ‘Messe Joyeuse’ proves. In fact, the guitar on Monstre Cosmic is often so intoxicating, it’s a shame it is so often so far back in the mix, for when they’re front and centre, as on closer ‘Change of Destination’, the melody so comprehensively wraps itself around the gentle strumming as to almost validate thoughts of the dickheads and their Gallic superiority complexes.

So Francophiles rejoice! French bands are still around that are capable of creating uniquely French music that doesn’t cater to the prejudices of the dickheads among us, nor desperately ape their English-speaking counterparts in an effort to score cross-channel success. Frenchmen (and women) don’t need to make self-consciously quirky, or retrograde dance-rock to cut it over here. Just rhythm, melody, and a dash of imagination.