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Released on June 5, 2015 via Prophecy Productions
Live albums always feel, at best, a little bit redundant to me. Live music is an all-round sensory experience – the sights, the smells, the volume and the engagement are all things that are bred from actually being there and unless the band intend on reworking their songs for a live show, effectively all you’re getting is a set of songs that is bound to have poorer production values than a studio album. So consider me sceptical, as I sit down to write this review.
Les Discrets hail from France and are purveyors of that particular brand of post-black metal that has far more in common with shoegaze and indie than Darkthrone. The band is effectively the product of mastermind Fursy Teyssier with support from a revolving group of friends that include the ubiquitous Neige, best known for his work with Alcest. At their best, Les Discrets are capable of melding lush, beautiful soundscapes around solid song structures, washed liberally with jangly guitars and gentle vocals. It can be an affecting experience and both previous albums Septembre Et Ses Dernières Pensées and Ariettes Oubliées have been regular spins on my stereo over the last couple of years. With Teyssier electing to move away from the metal genre in recent days, the decision was made to issue a live recording from a set at Roadburn in 2013, effectively marking the close of this chapter in Teyssiers’ musical journey.
Enough wittering on tangential matters then; is it any good? As much as I dislike saying praising a live recording, yes it is. I get these MP3s for free – a perk of putting in the time to review, I guess – and I’ve just ordered the album on CD. I paid actual money to do so. That’s how much I like it.
I don’t know what it is about Roadburn, but it does seem to generate some excellent live records. For someone who dislikes live recordings, I have picked up a couple in the past, and they’ve been great – Neurosis and Year of No Light in particular stick in my memory, and this collection is no different. The setlist is well pitched, with an even split between both albums, so we get a delicately melodic ‘L’Échappée’, the epic ‘Au Creux de l’hiver’, a driving ‘La Nuit Muette’ and a suitably massive ‘Song for Mountains’. These are faithful, near note perfect renditions, with relatively little crowd interaction, the only notable being some heartfelt thanks before the last song, but the emotional weight of the songs is so great that any other connection seems superfluous.
There is a feeling of life to this recording, an excitement that is palpable and infectious. The songs themselves, are by turns downcast and introvert, but also feel oddly hopeful; there are no harsh edges to Les Discrets and the songs play through a haze of delayed, picked post-rock style guitar, gentle tempos, dynamic shifts in volume and pace, topped with lovely harmonised vocals. Even the sections of songs that play to a more conventionally heavy sound, such as the black metal underpinnings of ‘Le Feuilles de l’Olivier’ are lush and warm in tone. The crowning achievement for the set is the fantastically sprawling, 18 minute 1:2 of the epic ‘Chanson d’automne’ and ‘Song for Mountains’ – these songs represent the band stretching and allowing their compositions to breathe, with some spine tingling and goosebump inducing moments along the way.
It helps that the production is excellent – the instrumentation is clear and well mixed, without even a hint of the thinness or muddiness that tends to be a feature of live albums, Teyssiers’ delicate, almost ethereal voice has been perfectly captured and some of the vocal harmonies sound wonderful, a challenging feat given the level of noise flying around on the average stage. There has been no effort to dub in excessive crowd noises after each song – the average live recording captures very little crowd sound because the microphones just aren’t set up to pick it up – in that respect the record feels authentic, which is weirdly heartening.
This is a great live record – which is a phrase that grates against my very soul to type. If you’re new to Les Discrets, then clearly the studio albums should be your first stop, but if you’re craving something new, or even just a little closure on this phase of the Fursy Teyssier / Les Discrets musical journey, then this is well worth an investment, both financially and emotionally.
