cheveu: bum

Cheveu has now reached album #3, and since they totally fucked up the first two steps, there's nothing surprising in seeing them come back at full speed on a countryside road stuck in a beat-up van on fire, with Bum, their most incredible piece of work to date. After a quick introduction (the promising but sketchy Cheveu, the Parisian trio blew up on the world's face with their second LP, 1000, a record thrown at the bored masses in full ragged glory. Cheveu now enters 2014 heavy-hearted and red-eyed, just like those wrecks of humanity blinded by the lights at closing time, their misery, bad skin and unachieved schemes exposed before dawn. Cheveu built its third LP on the ashes of those unholy hours, around the majestic "Polonia," a track on which David Lemoine recites a few lines from Bertrand Blier's Buffet Froid with the set expression of a man empowered by the fact he just shit his pants, while Etienne Nicolas and Olivier Demeaux slowly unwind the rapturous scenery of a theologian Western. The song is beautiful, grotesque, heart-rending -- just like a scene out of Jean Ray's Malpertuis backed by a funeral choir of angel-witches, and is definitely one of the most amazing things you'll hear this year. Bum, just like "Polonia," is an inner trip, an odyssey bordered by the walls of an antique mansion, full of baroque embroidery and padded club chairs, the perfect aural counterpart for the paintings of Rousseau. Cheveu's third record is full-on excess and absurdity, but is also much more legible and effective than their previous efforts. This time, the band opted for a much more live-based, organic and fully-produced sound, replacing 1000's messy cut-ups and Cheveu's shitgaze blur by throbbing organs and wall-of-sound choirs. The result : 10 tracks drier and sharper than anything Cheveu has done before, definitely out-of-this-world but elegantly mannered.