VOS VOISINS

This group made a huge scandal with the releases of their debut (and sole album) with its artwork depicting the scandal paper Allo Police (one of the trashiest ever "newspaper" to ever exist on Earth) and their album had to be taken away from the record shelves after a week or so, after lawsuits... Well the group survived it by changing their artwork and album name, as soon as they could, but failing to capitalize on their "coup", even though one titmle Monstre De La Main got quite a bit of radio airplay. Needless this original artwork album is worth a small fortune. Musically the standard prog quartet developed an organ-driven hard prog laced in with plenty other influences, with drummer Ringuet and keyboardist Perron writing all the music, but getting extra help for the lyrics. Historically important for Quebec's scene, their hard rock (sometimes Crimsonic)

Starting right with the rockiest Voisins (Mon Chum), the group basks away in musical delire (not the way Zappa would've, but still), while the following Sous La Lune is a very quiet but vocal affair, slowly developing into a mid-tempo track, before heading back to ground zero and starting all over. Cool work on voices. The hard rocking organ-drenched Instrumental is an excellent first peak in the album, where the band show their chops and let's face it, we're between an early Uriah Heep and keyboardist Perron easily surpassing Hensley, but not Jon Lord. The side-closing Tania is a slow piano crescendo that leads to a regular song, certainly not the album's highlight.

The flipside opens on the terrifying Monstre De La Main (playfully mistranslated into Main Monster) draws on some sinister King Crimson (including a mellotron) including tricky time sigs, and other noodlings and almost yelled vocals , VV then sounding abit like their fellow compatriots Octobre. Next up is Ya Juste De T'ça (more than dat) which shows some interesting songwriting with a dominating organ.. The album closes on the instrumental Le 3/4 De L'Archevèque (the ¾ of the Archbishop), which takes it time to develop but ends up in a grandiose finale with all the tralala and choirs to fit.

Although there is no way this writer would call VV's sole album anything close to essential, it would still remain a good addition to your collection and certainly more so if you're into Quebecois early prog.

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