ALCEST: SHELTER (2014)
1) Wings; 2) Opale; 3) La Nuit
Marche Avec Moi; 4) Voix Sereine; 5) L'Eveil Des Muses; 6) Shelter; 7) Away; 8)
Délivrance.
And now we finally know the truth: Neige's
preoccupation with «black metal» was really but an accident, a result of an
unlucky psychic derailment. It took the guy about ten years to sort that out,
but he did manage to reconnect with his own true self at last: Shelter erases the last, already barely
visible traces of heavy music from Alcest's palette, and replaces them with
heavenly lushness, as Neige and Winterhalter place themselves in the self-assured
hands of Birgir Jón Birgisson, the producer of Sigur Rós — who, in his turn,
teams them up with Amiina, the Icelandic chamber music / electronic ensemble,
well known for working together with Sigur Rós on quite a few occasions. Well,
if you think about it, it was probably bound to happen, sooner or later.
The decision was clearly a gamble, and it is
not yet clear how much it cost Neige in terms of mass quantities of admiration
— so far, I have read many an old fan's grumble on how the band lost its unique
identity by sacrificing the «black» in favor of the «lush». Now, they say, all
we have is an inferior, unnecessary, pale shadow of Sigur Rós, technically pretty,
but boring and devoid of its own vision. Trying to progress and develop is all
very fine, they say, but not at the expense of dissolving yourself in the ocean
of imitation. This point of view is totally acceptable if you really thought
that Souvenirs D'Un Autre Monde was
some sort of groundbreaking achievement, a fabulous milestone in the
development of «blackgaze»; but if you just thought, «hmm, nice dark droning
music, whatever», then it is not excluded that Shelter will please you more.
In any case, complaints of «selling out» are
entirely missing the point, because, composition-wise, Shelter is as much a proper brainchild of Neige as everything else.
Shimmery, jangly guitars instead of thick distorted tones and clean, pretty-melancholic
vocals instead of deathly growling are simply a different kind of coating, and
it's not even as if they weren't already in Neige's inventory from the very
beginning, either. As for the strings of Amiina, they are mostly relegated to
the background for ambience, so, in the end, it all still sounds more like
old-school Alcest than classic Sigur Rós, with Neige's guitar playing at the
center of everything.
So let us just ask ourselves two consecutive
questions, the only ones, in my opinion, that make sense in the context of an
album like Shelter: (a) does Shelter work as enjoyable, tasteful
background music? and (b) does Shelter
contain any moments or periods of «heavenly beauty» that would rise it above
the status of background music?
The first question I answer in the positive,
and, in fact, with the jarring «black» moments out of the picture, Shelter is unquestionably the finest «background
muzak» album to come from Alcest so far. Some of the songs feature subtle
dynamic build-ups (most notably the huge ten-minute grand-finale track), but
they are so subtle indeed that they probably won't be able to rip you out of
the process of doing whatever you're doing while listening to it. On the other
hand, the general mix of the thing, where the guitars usually sound like they
are lightly wobbling in space, the strings hover behind them like perfectly
normal particle vibrations, and Neige is trying to mesmerize you with the
latest in French lullaby craft, is a perfect soundtrack for doing something...
like, oh I dunno, writing this here review, for instance.
The second question is trickier. It does not
seem to me as if Neige were stringing together chords that weren't already well
explored previously — but there are some
individual moments that are sufficiently simple, yet at the same time quite
deep-reaching. I am speaking particularly of the second half of ʽVoix Sereineʼ
(a series of three-chord "nah nah nah"'s that gradually blossoms into
an ecstatic merry-go-round); of the delay/echo effect on the guitar strings in
ʽL'Eveil Des Musesʼ, which does evoke a bit of a «muse-centered» feeling; and the
huge finale of ʽDelivranceʼ, whose build-up is
sufficiently grand to stir up the soul... I think.
Still, «I think» is not quite the same as «I am
sure». In reality, my feelings are quite torn between realizing that this is
indeed the kind of music that Neige must be hearing in his heart even when
sleeping — and then realizing that most of its effectiveness comes from clever exploitation
of modern recording and mixing technology. And a song like ʽDélivranceʼ, with
its ten minutes of powerful building-up and meticulous winding down, lays claim
to overwhelming your emotions and flooding your senses (otherwise, it would
have no reason to exist), but is there any actual magic to that overwhelming, or is this just a guaranteed-to-work
recipé that could be generated by a computer, with just a few parameters fed
in? I really have no idea, and this shadow of doubt that refuses to go away
prevents me from properly falling under the spell of Shelter, and once you have refused to fall under that spell, you
can really only use it as background muzak.
But it's good enough to at least deserve an
honest thumbs up
— sufficiently different from Neige's previous work to warrant an autonomous
listen, never ugly or, in fact, anything less than «pretty», and it makes you
want to ask unanswerable questions, so I guess we should count that as a success
story, and the idea to bring in the Sigur Rós people was relatively fruitful.
Coming up: an equally productive collaboration with Godspeed You! Black
Emperor? The modern world of music may be running out of creative steam for all
we know, but at least the combinatory potential is on a constant rise.
Check "Shelter" (CD) on Amazon
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