La Femme
Mystère

If La Femme had fully embraced the direction taken by tracks like Sphynx, Tatiana, and Mycose, it could have turned into a great little musical product for me. A nice dark chamber to immerse my eardrums and mind into. But it's too easy a conclusion to come to… I must be missing something.

The tracks I've mentioned were put together with ingredients already present in the recipe used for the previous album, Psycho Tropical Berlin: robotic kraut rhythm sometimes immersed in a shoegazing amniotic liquid, sometimes married to minimalist punkish electronics, while doing away with the cocktail bar mood and opting for a good bit of darkness and perdition. All paired with a cover featuring a red-haired Samara Morgan and a figure behind the head.

Yes, perhaps something already heard compared to the previous album, something reminiscent of The Horrors and Toy. But who cares, I absolutely love these beautiful gloomy pearls.

Instead, I find a good dose of tracks that remind me of a post-modern Morricone (e.g., Le Vide Est Ton Nouveau Prénom, Où va le monde) but not even that post-modern in the end… huh!.

I perceived a bit of confusion.

If I were them, I would always have Clémence Quélennec sing; her icy synthetic tone from a psychiatric hospital envelops everything in a gentle spookiness. The male singer, on the other hand, is just a French singer, who, to an Italian ear, can't make up for his Frenchness.

A 3 to 4 for me, rounded up to 4 for the tracks mentioned at the beginning.