The Dodos
Visiter

Some records, often regardless of their intrinsic value, manage to captivate us and carry us away when we least expect it.

This debut by the Dodos (of whom I deliberately ignore the geographical origin, age, and sexual preferences) has been the equivalent of a springtime love at first sight: a fleeting glance, an initial repulsion, a sudden change of heart, and for a very short time, absolute love. That's how it is, and that's how it will always be. It's difficult and almost wrong to prolong such relationships (or listens, in this case) for too long. It's better to enjoy the present than to fret over the future. Because a record like this doesn't have and shouldn't have a long-lived future.

It may seem like an a priori stance, but it's instead a natural reaction of the seasoned listener towards the idiosyncrasies of the modern music business. It's hard for the excessive increase in production to result in a corresponding increase in "good" releases. It's almost a mathematical rule, in my opinion. Records as fresh as this "Visiter" are welcome, but let's not try to give them merits beyond their real possibilities or burden them with uncertain depth.

An album worthy of attention anyway, for its monotonous yet changing nature, which winks at us right away, as soon as we meet it ("Walking", and the hypnotic frenzy of "Red And Purple"), that approaches us with familiar speeches but that sound perfect ("Fools" and its vein of tamed Animal Collective). A beginning of roses and flowers, but as soon as we go out together, the first dark sides reveal themselves (the psycho-schizoid plots of "Joe's Waltz"), swept away by a sudden drunkenness in the bar around the corner ("It's That Time Again"). Like any good springtime infatuation, it always has that quirky taste (the slide at double the allowed speed of "Paint The Rust", the intense percussion of "Jodi") that seems to make the relationship last forever. But of course, it isn't, because our love starts to repeat itself, bringing up the same old topics ("The Season" and "God") to the point where we start thinking about a disturbing form of premature arteriosclerosis.

Fortunately, in this short acquaintance, we part with a small declaration of love that we can make our own for future use ("Winter").

At the end of this hour of music, suspended between folk that is sometimes tribal, sometimes bucolic, and occasionally psychedelic, we find ourselves reminiscing nostalgically about the time spent together, without sentimentality, but happy to start a new day. Even alone.