It’s the end of a challenging, yet somewhat Groundhogian (it’s not a word but should be) week, where life has seemed to pass by, less like a blur but more like a slightly injured slug who’s been on the piss and has recently separated from his wife. But as with all things, it behoves us as a species, to try and look at life with a soupcon of levity, optimism, and hope, that things will eventually even themselves out, normality (or a semblance thereof) will return and things will be better. It must be said through, that despite the crushingly desperate times we currently find ourselves in, that there remains one constant (certainly in my life) and that is the beacon of hope, the eternal flame of aspirations and dreams that is the ever-comforting presence of music. It does not answer back, it does not tell us off for not putting the washing away or for pissing on the floor (I do not do this intentionally). But it does provoke, challenge, disorientate and stokes passions and opinions and fires the imagination. Like a sixth sense also, music has the ability to transport you back in time to a very specific time and place, it’s a Proustian Rush, it’s sooooo evocative, that it can be disorientating and mildly disconcerting. It can take you back to being on a raft, traversing some rapids in Queenstown, New Zealand, or into a booth in a grotty old man’s pub in North Finchley or the bedroom of an old girlfriend. You get the point, and it’ll come as no surprise then, given the previous words, that this long mooted second album from Brest (FR) residents Valse Noot, took me on a time travelling escapade that has bought a smile to my curmudgeonly lips.
Firstly, I have to say that whilst a band name is not always a good example of nominative determinism, where a band nail their colours to the mast and say this is what you’re going to get. Good examples of bands where this maxim is applicable are say, Nails, Parasitic Ejaculation and Coldplay. The name of the band is clearly signposting what you are likely to hear. With Valse Noot, you would imagine you’re going to hear the house band from Mos Eisley’s grimiest opium den (do they have opium in the Star Wars universe?) as they play horrific covers of Tina Turner and The Wurzels. But, of course, I am being silly, because Valse Noot, don’t sound like that at all, far from it, they sound like the soundtrack to my youth and I like it very, very much. In a previous life, I was in a band and we peddled a variant of post hardcore very much in the vein of Jesus Lizard, Shellac, Rapeman and Fugazi (but obviously nowhere near as talented). The reason I mention this, is that upon listening to Utter Contempt, the entire album transported me back into a knackered Fiat Panda crammed full of spotty teenagers, amps and a drum kit as we paid to play some shithole venue in Swindon all sound tracked (via a decrepit tape deck) to the aforementioned bands of which Valse Noot are a heady amalgam of.
Valse Noot, are all distorted guitars, angular riffs, percussive drums and angry disenfranchised vocals. Having toured in France, this reminds me of bands we saw tear up squats in seedy French backwaters, snarling, phlegm flecked anger that sounds like Manna from heaven. The songs are snarling pit bulls, off the lead, swerving this way and that, chopping out lines of riffs and ladling them over staccato drums coupled with furious lyrical refrains like Refused doing the conga with Girls Vs. Boys. It’s also very reminiscent of a band we used to play with back in the day called Penthouse, who would balance desolate musical interludes for hours before suddenly breaking sledgehammer riffs upon the rocks all whilst looking like the coolest people you could ever wish to meet. I worry when something so vividly recreates memories from my past because, it can colour my opinion both in a positive and negative sense, but fuck that, this is my review and I’ll do what I want. I will go as far to say (hyperbole be dammed) that Valse Noot have produced one of the best albums I have heard this year and if you like your music, angry, angular, aggressive whilst couched in a production that is as warm as it immediate, then this French quartet tick all of the boxes in some style.
(9/10 Nick Griffiths)
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