SOUFFLEURS DE VERS

I should have attended their concert at the Olympia in Paris for the real start of their promotional tour for their latest studio album (I even convinced my seventeen years old son to come with me) but poor health prevented me to do so. I'll console myself while attending their gig at the Spirit of 66 within a few weeks from now.

The time of the great "Ange" albums is of course a very old story. IMHHO their true latest great album was released in 1978 ("Guet Apens") but the band still produced very good material with "Sève Qui Peut" in 1989 and a good one with "Culinaire Lingus" (2001).

This album is a rather rocking one (like their eighties work but better). Lyrics of course are above par. Not to be compared with the greatest "Ange" albums from their most brilliant period (the seventies, would you believe?). A song as "Dieu Est Un Escroc" fully brings us some thirty five years backwards to their most anti clerical great texts (and I am so in line with them as far as this philosophic question arises).

The funniest one of this album is definitely "Interlude". But therefore you need to master the French language unfortunately. But this has always been a deep characteristics of this great band and probably therefore they never had a broader audience outside the French speaking territories (to which my country - Belgium - belongs).

This album is rather a deception for me.

Coupée En Deux renowns with the good texts from Christain Descamps. One of the best lyricists in the prog music history IMHHO. No god nor love song in his work. Just fabulous themes and stories. Only pared with Gabriel early work if you see what I mean. This song is full of play on words but again, totally out of reach if you are not fluent in French.

This album lacks in grandeur. It is French rock oriented all the way through and I can't really identify one great song out of it. Even not the long and epic title track. This album is not essential at all to your "Ange" discography. Their first six albums do sell for very cheap on Amazon, so stick to them and discover a great prog band.

Two stars for this one. Désolé les gars!