![]() ![]() Sometimes, they come and more frequent pulses, but there’s no escaping the waves of his night/day songwriting (lost) soul. There’s breakout single, “Protection,” followed by its more bucolic cousin, “Sapphire.” Then, there’s “L’Île des Mort,” “Le Miroir,” and the title track, “Spiritual Instinct.” In all of them are slivers of Neige’s spiritual duality. Throughout Spiritual Instinct both dark and light are represented. The sunshine side of Neige often has a nostalgic bent, as in there’s no such thing as bad times, only the halcyon days of early spring and late summer. For as much as Neige uses the darker side of his personality to craft songs that feel and are genuinely as pissed off as the Bay of Biscay on a good day. Alcest, now in their 20th year, recognize balance. In a way, Alcest in 2019 are angrier than they ever have been.īut there’s light in the darkness, too. That being said, Spiritual Instinct flows directly from Neige’s time away from routine–as a touring musician, of course–where the things he cherishes in life are absent or unavailable due to changes in location and scene. ![]() ![]() ![]() To follow it, to lead it, to understand that instinct, musically, is sometimes wrong but always right. After the gothic beauty of Écailles de lune and the indie rock brilliance of Shelter, the main songwriter in Alcest, Neige (aka Stéphane Paut) has learned that instinct is the most powerful tool. Now, on their sixth full-length album, titled Spiritual Instinct, the France-based post-black metallers have found the sound they’ve been looking for. Though it’s meditative, it’s far from restful - it’s acutely conscious of the thorn in its side, the lump in its throat, the deep ache in its heart.Alcest have come a long way since EP Le Secret and full-length Souvenirs d’un autre monde. That feels like an apt summary of Hold You Up as a whole: the foundations are always shifting, creating the waves that give these songs their uneasy, melancholic sway. Just as you think you’ve worked out the way the timing works, it seems to slip out of sync. Harding also brings the melodic thread to closer “America,” where the interplay between the rhythmic loop in the background and the instrumental tapestry woven in the foreground is alternately hypnotic and destabilising. “Just An Unkind Time” brings bassist Brian Harding to the fore, which makes for a welcome shift, as his contributions up to this point are hard to discern. “You Have It” is propelled by a tight, shuffling groove from Weis, above which Christensen’s plucked guitar reverberates beautifully. Halfway through, the song springs to life when the vocals first interject, as though Christensen has nodded off during the hypnotic introduction, then woken up and remembered he needs to sing. The eight-minute title track is animated by brushed cymbals, murky guitar arpeggios, and an insistent kick-drum pulse that brings to mind the ambient techno of Gas. As the track fades out, the listener is left with two rhetorical questions: “ What would I do without you? What would you do without me?” There’s no resolution. The song’s metallic sheen of reverb casts a sinister halo around the looped piano and snatches of vocal, Christensen’s guitar jutting into the spaces around the other instruments. “Breathe” is suffocatingly claustrophobic, sparse cymbal strikes hissing like steam escaping from a fissure. Matt Christensen’s main lyrical message, “ I’m safer taking care of you,” feels like one of hope - or perhaps co-dependence. Their new album, Hold You Up, wastes no time establishing its mood, “Safer” dropping the listener straight into Zelienople’s foggy, incandescent flow, Mike Weis’s ride cymbal racing like an anxious pulse, woody snare hits like someone knocking on the side of a coffin. This is grayscale music, waterlogged and grainy. Long-standing Chicago trio Zelienople don’t so much take you on a journey as add weight to the air around you. ![]()
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