In previous years Reverberations conducted a marathon, day by day, countdown of the top 25 albums from the waning year. This year, between today and the end of the month, we will take a bit less ambitious approach, chronicling only the top 10 releases of 2012. In January, in addition to reviews of brand spanking new music, we will also make occasion to reflect on some of the year's other fine recordings.
For our top 10 countdown, many of these selections will have been covered previously in Reverberations, in which event we will simply link you to the earlier review. A few of these, however, will require new reviews.
At No. 9 ... an earlier posted review of the Liminanas "Crystal Anis:"
Liminanas - Crystal Anis (Hozac)
French pop marvels, the Liminanas, hail not from Paris, but from a town called Perpignan,
nestled between the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean
(also home to the also awesome Sonic Chicken 4).
The Liminanas self-titled debut, released in the States on Chicago’s Trouble in Mind
label, was a sparkling collection of garage-rock and Velvet Underground
inseminated Gallic pop. The follow up, Crystal
Anis (on another Chicago
underground stalwart, Hozac Records) is a shorter, sharper
distillation of their aesthetic. Smart, simple and seductive - you’ll listen
again and again.
Since the French pop of the Sixties and early Seventies,
represented by singers in the Ye-Ye style (which could be generously
interpreted to include everyone from France Gall and Sylvie Vartan to Jacques
Dutronc and Francoise Hardy) and the sinuous, sexy songs of Serge Gainsbourg,
Gallic pop has been pretty much a wasteland for three decades. The petit
renaissance that began with bands like Sonic Chicken 4 and the Plasticines showed the
French could rock out with flair. And the Liminanas add additional support to a
new case for Franco-rock.
Lionel and Marie (Liminanas) use spare, simple materials.
Unlike many of the V.U. influenced ensembles since the Jesus and Mary Chain or
Spacemen 3, Lionel Liminana abjures slick slabs of harmonic distortion,
favoring instead discreet bits of Reed/Morrison guitar framings, more redolent
of the Velvet’s third, self-titled album and Loaded than the merciless wave of White Light/White Heat. The band’s music also travels well with
fellow neo-retro rockers like the Raveonettes and the Dum Dum Girls, even
sometimes suggesting the Euro-cool of Stereolab.
From the tremolo guitar on “Longanisse” (a sort of sausage,
hmm?), and the flanged sounds of the title track, to the blasts of fuzz guitar
on the choruses of “AF3458,” the Liminanas keep the textures fresh and
changing. Lionel’s guitar parts play off his Farfisa and Vox Continental style organ lines.
Championed since the heyday of the sound by guys like Jeff “Monoman” Connolly
in DMZ and the Lyres, these archetypal keyboard sounds are forever identified
with Sixties garage-rock, a vibe associated more with one (or two) hit wonders
like the Castaways, Five Americans and Seeds than the Beatles/Stones/Kinks
canon.
Lionel’s vintage guitar and organ sonorities are driven by
Marie’s basic, insistent drumming, and blended with everything from ukulele (“Salvation”)
and glockenspiel (“Longanisse”). It’s a palette both bone simple and subtly complex
and the Liminanas know the difference between embellishment and excess.
You can hear the ghost of “I Got You Babe” on “Hospital Boogie,” while the instrumental
“Belmondo” (a homage to new wave film star Jean Paul Belmondo) sounds like a
mix of Syd Barrett’s (okay, early Pink Floyd) “Lucifer Sam” and the fictional
soundtrack stars Max Frost and the Storm Troopers. “Betty and Johnny,” one of
several songs sung in the band’s native tongue, has a guitar figure so
derivative of Hilton Valentines’ three chord declaration on the Animals’ “We
Got to Get Out of This Place” (itself a variation on Link Wray’s “Rumble”) that
it might be a sample (but I think it’s played).
There’s a defiant, anomic cool to the Liminanas lyrics (at
least the ones in English that a dope like me can understand), epitomized by
the lyrics from “Salvation” – ‘I remember nothing when I think of you”/”I need
salvation, but I don’t need you”. The detached, stylish cool of vintage Godard
characters prevails here. It’s easy to imagine this music as an updated
soundtrack for Breathless, Alphaville,
or Band of Outsiders.
The odd song out here is their collaboration with Southern
gothic storyteller/garage-punker John Wesley Coleman, who sings a kind of blank
verse saga about a girlfriend mired in poverty and bored criminality (she might
steal his car, but she “can’t afford the gas”). Hey, it starts with the line “I
want to tell you about my baby;” and any song that cops the opening line from
“Gloria” is a winner in my book. It’s a weird, but ripe paring, suggesting a
full-length collaboration between Coleman and the Liminanas. I’m proposing it
at least.
Crystal Anis pushes all of my cool, dark buttons. The
Liminanas imply a certain flirtatious naivete. But I think they know exactly what
they’re up to; and I would like more.
Reverberating: 8.6 (originally 8.4)
