The Limiñanas
Malamore

I already know how it's going to end. The fact is that every time I deal with a new Liminanas record, if it's true that I like it from the first listen, you can be sure that as time goes by, I'll end up listening to it over and over again and loving it more and more, to the point of madness.

This French duo has an incredible sense for melody and at the same time knows what it truly means to play garage and psychedelic music. I usually describe them as the best 'yéyé' band around and frankly, I still find this definition even more fitting after listening to this latest record.

'Malamore' (Because Music), that's the name of the record, is a compendium of everything that encompasses this duo's imagery and has already been offered in other records released over the years, but you won't find anything repetitive or boring in the listening. Every single record released by this band is something unique and original in its own way: something you have never heard before.

So they've brought innovations to their sound this time as well, expanding the range of possibilities and their own imagery. Naturally, at the core, they still sound wonderfully garage and psychedelic, they continue to sing both in English and French (in the previous record, there was even a song in Italian, practically spoken, which inevitably makes me think of Massimo Volume every time) but in 'Malamore' we can find what I believe are influences from the sound of North-West Africa ('El Beach,' 'Malamore'), which, incidentally, were also noticeable in previous works and particularly in 'Costa Blanca,' an acid imaginary journey in a car from Italy and across France and Spain to the city of Alicante on the Costa Blanca, the city the Romans called 'Lucentum' after the Second Punic War and the defeat of Carthage.

Lionel and Marie Liminana manage to blend different influences. Listening to one of their records is like traveling around the world but staying in the same place, and this is certainly the most acid element of their music that drives me to make a comparison with the literature and cinema of a great artist like the Chilean Alejandro Jodorowsky, who among other things also holds French citizenship. 'El Sordo,' 'Kostas,' 'Zippo,' all these songs refer to a certain type of imagery where magic and psychedelia meet ancient cultures and traditions, even something like superstition and fate and misfortune (the malamore) and folkloric heritages so distant in time that they can be relocated to a precise era.

And the band's very approach to music has a close connection with the world of cinema. 'Bob Duvall, Robert Mitchum,' Marie names them in the song 'Malamore,' which gives the album its name, a song whose sounds undeniably have something reminiscent of Joy Division. I realize this might seem strange, but listen to believe. And if this isn't enough to confirm this duo's love for Joy Division and the connection between the two bands, listen to the bass line of 'Garden of Love,' where you'll find it impossible not to recognize the touch of the great Peter Hook who for the occasion collaborates with the group.

Jodorowsky had imagined 'El Topo' as a western film with heavy doses of Christian symbolism and more mixed with Eastern philosophy, where guns and spiritualism intersected. It's a fairly acid movie, very acid, and can certainly for me be related to what this duo's songs describe, but also because they are French, if I really have to choose a western film, then I choose another one, a 'spaghetti western,' not one of the more famous ones. The title is 'The Great Silence' and the film is directed by Sergio Corbucci. The cast includes two of the greatest actors of the genre, Klaus Kinski and Frank Wolff, as well as the French Jean-Louis Trintignant, who plays the good guy, a mute gunman who falls in love with a woman and in the end is killed by the fierce bounty killer played by Kinski.

It's an unconventional film for the genre. Firstly, for the settings, on the Mexico-United States border but in a mountainous landscape and a freezing snowy winter. Secondly, and most importantly, because for the first time in the world of 'spaghetti westerns,' in the end, the good guy is killed by the bad guy. When asked about this by the screenwriters, they simply replied that the film had to end this way. There were no alternatives: after all, Trintignant had a big heart, but he was certainly not a good gunslinger. Not as much as Klaus Kinski.

Even today, it's probably a general opinion that a good gunslinger shouldn't have feelings and should possess the so-called 'heart of stone.' I don’t know how things stand, I've never held a gun, nor do I intend to, but I don't think Trintignant was all that bad after all. The fact is that things sometimes go well, other times they end badly, and in my opinion, Trintignant knew how to shoot, he was a good gunslinger, and he had a heart of gold and knew how to love, and perhaps with this record the Liminanas have somehow rewritten his story. They have redefined the rules. Which then, let's face it, according to Italian cinema, Trintignant should have already died in the car in the movie 'Il sorpasso' by Dino Risi and yet here he is, driving his convertible across the Italian border and speeding straight to Alicante in Spain. Young and immortal. No one can stop him.