Centenaire: The Enemy
Orval Carlos Sibelius (real name Axel Monneau) first came to Rockfort’s attention via his eponymous solo album on the excellent
Clapping Music (which also releases the vinyl version of this). On the basis of that album alone, we’d follow him most places – combining My Bloody Valentine noise, 60s pop and jazzy spontaneity, at times it put him close to some of Jim O’Rourke’s more tuneful work; in other places it was like the kind of album The Boo Radleys tried and consistently failed to make. That led us to Centenaire’s 2006 debut, which saw Monneau band together with three other mavericks: Damien Mingus (who records under the name
My Jazzy Child), Aurélien Poitier, and drummer Stéphane Laporte (aka
Domotic, on Clapping Music’s now sadly defunct sister label,
Active Suspension). In contrast to the FX-heavy ‘Orval Carlos Sibelius’, the group focused on more traditional instrumentation and seemed to be putting themselves over as a kind of agrarian musical co-operative, toiling mysteriously in the vein of the spookier British folk rockers.
‘The Enemy’ continues on that path, and with even greater success. There’s very little that’s twee or cringe-inducingly ‘olde’ in Centenaire’s world, as much as they can at times bring to mind images of medieval woodland, stony-faced serfs etc; in the context of the largely earthy, dry sound, reverb-y guitar and the odd interjection of eerie keyboard ensure that the landscape is pregnant with mystery. It’s the shifts from light to sombre, near-Gothic (rather than goth) moods that are particularly admirable; the lilting, sweetly sung ‘Wheelchair’ kicks thing off in sunny style, but later ‘Farmers Underground’ is propelled by thundering, ominous drums and rattling percussion, getting heavier and stranger as it goes on. ‘Testosterone’ meanwhile, enters with some bruising, hardcore-like punches before transforming into a hypnotic ballad. Awe, dread and the uncanny all have a place in the picture as much as pleasant pastoralism – and in our book, that’s a sterling reason to embrace ‘The Enemy’.
David McKenna
www.myspace.com/centenaire