Alcest
Les Voyages De L'âme

Chris didn't hear the car coming. Caught up as he was in the situation and his thoughts, he rushed out of his vehicle to help the victims of an accident. "Maybe," he told himself, "if I manage to save them, it's as if I were there and managed to save Ian and Marie too." Ian and Marie were his teenage children, who died in a tragic car crash a few years earlier: Chris wasn't with them, nor was Annie, his wife, and the children's mother. The man didn't have time to assess the condition of the injured when two headlights blinded him: a strong impact, and everything went black.

When he awoke, he felt strangely well, as if nothing had happened. He was in an unusually familiar house, without doors or windows, illuminated by a warm light, the kind of light typical of autumn sunsets or spring sunrises. He was at ease in that place, where the floor was covered by a very thin layer of water, with greenery, flowers, and grass embracing the columns and giving a sense of life to the walls. He went outside and was amazed by the view he saw: vast valleys opened before him, a sea on the horizon (or maybe it was a lake? He couldn't say for sure), and a tree, perhaps a peach tree, on a nearby hill, coloring the surrounding clearing pink (the color of its petals). Chris recognized the place as the subject of one of Annie's paintings, and the dwelling was nothing other than the place where he and his wife would retire in old age, to spend their last days there "like two old turtles laughing while counting their wrinkles," as Annie used to say with a smile.

Then he understood everything, realizing the accident, and he was happy because he knew he was in paradise (or at least, his personal paradise), but at the same time, as the days went by, he felt like he was in hell: he hoped to see his children again, but except for two young people he met in that place, there was no trace of Ian and Marie. And above all, he felt Annie's suffering, now alone on earth, deprived of the love of her husband and children. He saw her withering, hour after hour, like that beautiful peach tree that she decided to erase from one of her paintings in the real world, and which suddenly, in Chris's paradise, turned into a lifeless skeleton.

Annie's suicide was unfortunately in the air, and when it materialized, Chris didn't think twice about going to the hell of suicides to bring her with him. He knew that suicides are stubborn, that they don't realize their ultimate act and that they relive their lives with great pain in their grayest and most faded colors, but he didn't care: he had to be with her, no matter where. On his journey to hell, he was accompanied by the two young people who had been with him until then, and only through small gestures, through smiles or tears, did he realize he had always had his two children with him, just with a different appearance, and that they had always watched over his actions. After saying goodbye to them, perhaps for the last time, he entered Annie's house, a gloomy version of their dream home, and after futile words, he resigned himself to the idea of succumbing to the languid torpor that death within death was giving him. But just as he was about to close his eyes, he felt a warm hand pull him, felt an embrace, felt his face kissed by warm tears. And when he awoke, he was with Annie, in their idyllic home: Annie had saved him, their love had broken the chains that bind souls to their destinies, and they were there now, together with their children, in the home of their dreams. The peach tree was in bloom again, and Annie's red hair danced in the wind like the blanket she had lost on that sunny day many years before when they met.

Alcest's new work, "Les Voyages de l'Ame," does not differ much from what the French artist accomplished in the previous two (three if we consider the EP at the beginning of his career) albums. Neige once again offers us his personal evocation of the fairy tales and childhood dreams of his youth, and he does so with the well-known blend of black metal, shoegaze, and post-rock (shoegaze seems to be the term now) that he brought to the forefront. Black metal, understood as a rhythmic base, especially, has gradually faded, appearing only in some accelerations or in the really sparse (unfortunately) screams of the singer. The melodic framework is upheld by soft and languid guitars with dreamy and sweet tones, which lose themselves and sum up, merge and reborn from their own notes. As mentioned, no novelty then, and while this might now bore some listeners, on the other hand, it can only please many Alcest fans. But after all, I don't think many expected anything different from this album, which doesn't reach the heights of "Souvenirs d'un Autre Monde," the pioneer of the genre (if it's even a genre), but it is a pleasure to listen to, and it knows how to cradle and transport us to other worlds, other realities, sometimes even beyond our own dreams.