Songs On The Rocks

We Say...

Review by Garry Mullholland

For their third album, mischievous Parisian duo Nicolas Sfintescu and Ezekiel Pailhes have forsaken the conventional techno that made their name and fully embraced a Brechtian bierkellar aesthetic. The result is a 47-minute mini-masterpiece that should, if there is any justice, make Nôze the disco Gogol Bordello.

Songs on the Rocks opens with its best shots. "L’Inconnu Du Placard" finds the hitherto hidden connection between Rain Dogs-era Tom Waits, funky house and Walt Disney’s "Pink Elephants on Parade." Based around a timpani-charged rhythm, an ever-circling three-note marimba riff and Nicolas Sfintescu barking "Uncle Charlie!" in a Franglais growl, it's close to being the perfect globally-informed dance tune for a pop scene rediscovering the pleasures of witty disco. It's followed by the irresistible "Danse Avec Moi," which manages to showcase saloon bar piano, a dreamily-arranged orchestra and a deliciously sexy French duet between guest vocalists Dani Siciliano and David Lafore.

You could argue that the waltz-time "You Have to Dance," with its junkyard percussion, Dixieland clarinet and Marc Ribot-style guitar, wears its Waitsian influences a little too proudly on its whiskey-soaked sleeve; it sets the tone for much of the rest of the album, including "Childhood Blues" (Waits goes acid house), "You Have to Dance" (Waits goes ska-house) and "Slum Girl" (Waits goes Isaac Hayes). Nevertheless, "Slum Girl"’s epic arrangement — all stabbing brass and huge, sinister strings — exemplifies both the grand ambition and the come-hither humour of Nôze’s muse. And when they tear themselves away from the swordfishtrombones, the result is wonderful music like "Ethiopo," which takes the entire notion of tribal house to its natural conclusions. Add the extraordinary, lo-fi piano-house club hit "Remember Love" and it becomes patently obvious that, purely on the basis of melody, rhythm, arrangement and production, Songs on the Rocks is one of 2008’s finest, all-killer-no-filler albums.