Acoustic Ladyland
Skinny Grin

I don't usually like albums with covers featuring famous paintings, but in this case, it was a great choice. The beautiful portrait of dancer Alesander Sacharoff painted by Russian expressionist Alexej Von Jawlensky already gives a taste of the CD's content: it makes you imagine a crazy, convulsive, frantic, sometimes violent, sick, incoherent music...

And even if these Acoustic Ladyland don't sound precisely expressionist, they certainly sound brilliant! A musical cocktail that is far from banal or predictable. Imaginative ideas, supported by a remarkable compositional intelligence and excellent technique, follow each other second after second, creating a vibrant and amphetamine-like sound.

There are four of them, and there isn't even a guitar: bass, drums, sax, and keyboards. The charisma is granite-like and brawling, the influences many and well blended: the more neurotic Talking Heads, the more cinematic Fantomas, certain melancholy passages reminiscent of Morphine, the more aggressive Battles, the more frantic King Crimson, and a touch of Soft Machine's non-sense.

Acoustic Ladyland, despite the misleading name, is a truly eclectic war machine. From the start, they surprise: Road Of Bones starts delicate and moving, but soon bursts into saturation, returns soft and jazzy only to explode again and take flight thanks to that saxophone that cries and screams simultaneously. New Me is aggressive in blending doom, math, and a pinch of funk; while Red Sky seems like the cleansed Fugazi letting a sax sing, but it's not a sax; it's Prometheus screaming his rage at the sky. Paris is pure metropolitan paranoia, perfectly declining wave and jazz, noise and funk. Never a drop in the tracks, a nice mix of frenzy and heaviness without losing the emotion. And it's even more surprising when, amidst all this occasionally epileptic, occasionally murky fury, Cut & Lies emerges: a punk-funk track that's edgy and decadent, enriched by Coco Eletrik's vocal presence as a mocking femme fatale, surreal in context but irresistible and very entertaining. And Glass Agenda also flaunts great radio appeal, a kind of robotic indie-jazz dance. Until the end, the album is precious and fascinating, brimming with creativity.

What more is there to say now? Nothing, except it would be a big mistake to miss out on this "skin and bones smile" where maturity and impulsiveness travel balanced and happy. Come on, hurry up, few things are worthy of such ardor.