One of the best things about writing reviews as a paid up obsessive metalhead – and potentially one of the most overwhelming – is not just getting to write snarky screeds about all manner of metal albums, it’s that beautiful moment when your reviewer and fan selves come together, and you’re entrusted with a new album by a band you already know and adore. And well before most of the rest of the world to boot. It’s exciting, obviously, but also frustrating, because you can’t really discuss it with anyone properly until it comes out, and mildly terrifying, because you’re suddenly very, very aware of all the people who may end up reading what you write. Because under any other circumstances, you’d be that person. As one of those Alcest fans who devours anything and everything connected to a new Alcest album, it’s really rather unnerving to find myself having to write one of those very reviews. But our esteemed editor has handed (emailed) over the precious, so I’ve got to write something.
Before I do however, if you’re looking for a review of this album that could even be described as – even loosely or charitably – as balanced, objective, unbiased etc, this is not that review. I really cannot stress enough how much I am not that reviewer when it comes to my absolute favourite French post-y peculiarities, so consider yourselves warned. Also, I’m very aware that the main audience for this review is likely to be people who already know and love Alcest, whose primary question is probably “ok great, but where does this sit in the Alcest canon”, so I’m reviewing accordingly. If this is, in fact, your first encounter with Alcest, then this will at least give you some context? I don’t know. Go and listen to Souvenirs d’un autre monde. Please.
My long-standing love affair with Alcest, which stretches back the best part of twenty years now (apologies if I’ve just made anyone feel like a fossil), and began with the superlative, legitimately genre-defining Souvenirs d’un Autre Monde, which for my money is still the single best thing they’ve ever done. I’ve loved each album since then, each for different reasons, but in the end, I always go back to that first full-length masterpiece. So Spiritual Instinct surprised me somewhat in 2019, by immediately rocketing into the position of my second-favourite Alcest album. Not only did it surprise me, but between the early releases of Protection and Sapphire, the long, agonising wait for the album itself, and seeing them live shortly after the release (at Damnation Festival, from the balcony, with an over-excited Glaswegian, who made some very strange noises when he realised he was wearing the same Adidas as Neige), let’s just say Les Chants de l’Aurore has a lot to live up to.
So that’s where I’m at going into this album. The chances of Alcest ever releasing an album I don’t like (or even love) are pretty slim at this point, but even given my history with the band, Spiritual Instinct is a special album, with lots of memories attached to it. It’s also of the sort of calibre that has absolutely no business being a sixth album – Alcest apparently never got the memo that most bands have released at least one dodgy album by this point in their careers, and that makes me nervous of new albums now. Surely – if only by the law of averages – there’s eventually got to be an Alcest album that’s at least mid compared to its predecessors, right? I mean, they can’t just keep getting better with every release, to the point that every new album turns out to be their best in nearly twenty years.
Can they?
Hold that thought while I walk you through it.
We kick off proceedings with Komorebi (Sunlight filtering through the foliage – AKA the most Alcest-y track name ever), which shimmers gently into being, landing somewhere between Kodama and Spiritual Instinct in mood, with some heavy Les Discrets vibes at various points, and no small resemblance to Protection off the aforementioned Spiritual Instinct. All by way of some far older-style melodies, because despite the primary reference points here being more recent, it also manages to touch base with pretty much every previous Alcest album (yes, even Shelter), adding some new elements, and yet more of the usual gauzy, shimmering atmospherics that builds on the sort of classic-Alcest-writ-large sound that made Spiritual Instinct so special. Spoilers: this concept will come up again, as will the big alt rock style chords in here, that take me right back to Sapphire in particular. Also of note is the loose, unashamedly joyful acoustic section towards the end, which I can only describe as basically the musical equivalent of spinning in circles purely for the hell of it.
From there, the album takes flight with L’Envol (Flight), leading with a gentle, rolling sound that’s very much the cleaner end of Alcest’s modus operandi, with more acoustic flourishes. The spiky black edge is still there, but lurking just out of view for the most part. It also switches things up a lot – if the theme here is flying, then it’s part actually flying, part watching someone else fly off into the distance, and soaring is a suitably apt description of a lot of this track. Like the best of Alcest, this is a superb track to lose yourself in. It’s everything we’ve come to expect from them, and yet it still manages to be new and forward-looking. And then, just when you’ve settled into what seems like a blueprint for the rest of the album, the black metal screams return, right when you least expect them.
Alcest (well, Neige) have a famously fraught relationship with the harsh vocals bit of blackgaze – I remember reading a distinctly prickly interview with Neige just after Shelter came out, where he said: “I won’t bring the screams back just to keep people happy”. I remember it because even as flat words on a webpage, you could hear the annoyance associated with constantly being asked why there weren’t any harsh vocals on Shelter. And to be fair, even as a fan I got sick of people going on about it when Shelter came out, so I can only imagine how fed up Neige is of the whole harsh vocals debate. And I call them harsh vocals here because technically that’s what they are, but there’s something different about the screams on this album: rather than being used to add or intensify an edge to the music, the howls come in when the music has reached a pinnacle of (positive) intensity, and it’s all so ecstatic that all you can do is scream. Sort of like a musical version of cute aggression, where the thing/cat in front of you is so goddamn adorable, that just for a second, you want to eat its face. You never would, but the intensity of the feeling does funny things to the brain, and that’s how the few fully harsh vocal interludes on this album feel. Which is a take on black metal I wasn’t expecting, but I actually really like.
Talking of Spiritual Instinct, I hope you liked Sapphire on that album, because the next track, Améthyste, sounds like it was written in the same session as it (not least because they’re both named after gemstones). It also reminds me of Agalloch in the intro, but the body of this track is almost like Neige and Winterhalter tried to do Sapphire all over again, but were listening to Kodama while they were doing it. Not that a single word of the above is a bad thing, but as I’m rapidly finding out, if you weren’t a big fan of Spiritual Instinct, then (apart from being Wrong) you’re also going to be out of luck with a fair bit of Les Chants de l’Aurore. Quite apart from anything else, that big, clunky alt-rock sound on Sapphire that sounded a bit Pixies-ish, a bit glam-era Placebo-y? It’s on this album too, and it’s at its best here, especially combined with the Japanese elements.
Moving on, if you’re starting to feel that Écailles de lune and Les Voyages de l’âme have been glossed over here, then fear not! Flamme Jumelle (Twin Flame) channels both, with a repeating motif that’s very Shelter, to the point that it’s a little like listening to Shelter’s highlights plus the heaviness of Écailles and Voyages. It’s also really quite upbeat for Alcest – not that their music isn’t positive generally, but this is really quite perky and uplifting, in a way that we’ve really only seen previously on Shelter. The only way I can really describe the difference is that where a lot of Alcest’s previous work has an upward, soaring quality (including a fair bit of the rest of this album), Flamme Jumelle doesn’t need to soar, because it’s already up in the heavens, in a very similar vein to the bit of Komorebi that’s basically just pretty, joyful noises.
Réminiscence is the shortest track on the album, and it’s a gorgeous, fragile, mostly acoustic piece, where the voice is used more like an instrument than a means of conveying anything. It falls into a very specific category of orchestral, atmospheric folk pop that I know best through Tattle Tale (if you also discovered them via a niche film soundtrack: I see you), but there are countless examples you could insert here. This then leads into probably the only real surprise on the album: L’Enfant de la Lune (The Child of the Moon). First up we have some spoken word, delivered by a woman who plays the viol de gamba elsewhere on the album. The general vibe is Alcest, but the actual material, not so much. That is, until the familiar wall of sound comes crashing in, much like it does multiple times on two of my all-time favourite Alcest tracks, Printemps emeraude, and Sur l’autre rive je t’attendrai. From that point on, it’s basically classic Alcest, albeit with some interesting strings, and sounds not unlike the heavier end of Écailles in places.
Then, we come to the end. Or, to be more accurate, L’Adieu (The Farewell). This is very much in the same vein as Réminiscence, with delicate, resonant melodies that (in the best possible way) don’t really go anywhere until the classic Neige vocals kick in. It’s a very sparse, understated track, and a perfect comedown after the intensity of the rest of the album.
So, there we are. It’s new, but it references pretty much all of their back catalogue at one point or another. Meaning it’s retrospective, but they’re also clearly moving forwards at a rate of knots. It’s got the harsh vocals, yet none of the desolation that usually comes hand in hand with the black end of blackgaze. It’s unapologetically positive and joyful, but complex enough that you don’t get bored with the relentless optimism. It’s heavy and demanding of your attention, but also soft and acoustic in places. It’s intensely familiar, yet different enough to hold your attention. It’s like listening to Alcest’s greatest hits, but with new songs. Whichever of their previous albums is your favourite, you’ll find it in here somewhere, and the more I listen to the album as a whole, the more I appreciate that aspect of it.
All in all, it’s an Alcest album. Obviously. But it’s a beast of an Alcest album. Where the rest of their albums are distinct from each other, occupying different niches within the history of the band, Les Chants de l’Aurore brings a lot of it together onto one album, then builds on it to make an even bigger, even better, even more Alcest-y sound than they’ve ever produced before.
Remember I said Spiritual Instinct had rocketed up into the lofty position of my second favourite Alcest album of all time (after Souvenirs)? It’s still early days for this one, but on repeated listens (7ish full run-throughs at this point), I think it just about edges out Spiritual Instinct in my own personal chart. Which means they’ve once again released my new second favourite Alcest album, which is frankly unfeasible at this point in their career. So, in conclusion, it would appear that yes. Alcest can just keep getting better and better with every release. And much as I adore them and this album, I won’t pretend I’m not a little bit baffled by that.
(10/10 Ellie)
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