|
|---|
New album on iTunes and Amazon.
|
Welcome Friends The French Semester is a fresh, new music extravaganza raised on indie rock anthems, new wave hand clappers, late mod polyphony, and shoegaze technics. Cardinal rules were heeded, then misplaced. Melodies equipped with hooks, rusty ones, then delivered in their imperfection. Rarely is a band so diverse in origin: India, Mexico, Vietnam, and Europe. Where hearts break and mend over basic elements. Water, heat, electricity, and protein. Foreign lads in a foreign land, rock and roll gave them homes in a new world where people, goods, and information were bought and sold interchangeably. They felt compelled to remind you with pop songs of gestalt, flights of fancy over nationalism, ecology, decolonization, and Empire. The marriage of rolling backbeat and Third World nostalgia. Wooden roots under rickshaw wheels. Scratchy phonorecords and wet laundry beaten on the rocks. Request our music on KROQ - Los Angeles, CA
|
|
|---|---|---|
Reviews PopMuzik |
Critics Hail "Good Friends Only I Could See" "I shouldn't have gone so long without knowing this band better. They play the kind of echoey, jangly rock and roll that reminds me of Southern California in the '60's (from the perspective of a snowbound East coaster, which I was at the time). The sound is of the sun and the surf and the sand. Their music instantly transported me back to the time when rock and roll was experiencing the growing pains that occurred between The Beatles early, empty-headed pop ditties and the music that resulted after they dropped acid and became intellectuals. The years 1965 and 1966 when bands like We Five, The Turtles, The Byrds and the like were turning to folk music to try to add relevancy to the genre. The times demanded more than songs just about crooning at the moon in June, which was all popular music had been about for decades. I was too young to understand Dylan at the time (his music was not played on commercial radio in the mid '60's) so I didn't comprehend the revolution he was spearheading. But I was exposed to more mainstream folk music through Peter, Paul and Mary, The Kingston Trio and even Joan Baez, and immediately recognized the value of socially conscious music and it's power to move people. This isn't to say that The French Semester write political songs. Just that their music reminds me of a time when change seemed possible and necessary. Not unlike now. It's not in their lyrics, it's in the hollow, slightly haunted and distant sound of their music. The lyrics are often cryptic and unsettling, yet always thought provoking. Riaz writes with just the right combination of irony, wit and truth. His vocal style is plain and simple, no artifice or pretension and after talking to him, I realized he sings as he speaks... naturally and without hype. It's the lyrics themselves that make your head spin, trying to wrap your brain around what he's saying. Though evocative of the sixties, I don't want to give the impression that they're copying anyone. They have managed to carve out a niche of their own in the local contemporary scene and sound unlike anyone else. There are elements that remind me of The Brian Jonestown Massacre, or a little Grizzly Bear, some Stevenson Ranch Davidians. Even Buffalo Springfield or The Byrds. But after listening to their new CD, Good Friends Only I Could See, I'm more impressed than ever. In fact, I can't stop playing it." -Brad Roberts, Feed Your Head, Jan. 30, 2009
|
|
|
|
E Mail List: Sign up today. |
Home | About Us | Reviews | Live Show | Gallery | Music | Contact |
