Cheveu - Cheveau (2009) [Permenant] // Grade: B

France: the new Providence?  We’re not talking a country full of Lightning Bolts here, but there’s something in member sharing and fuck-it-all attitude of the country’s major lo-fi/noise exports—A.H. Kraken, The Anals and Cheveu—that suggests the same small-town, big-noise vibe of AS220 or an Olneyville warehouse. Though it’s not a perfect stylistic parallel, Cheveau (album title avec ‘a’, band name sans) does smack of a certain RI grit and noise, even more so than the band’s self-titled debut.

And that’s sort of a thing: this isn’t necessarily a departure for the French duo, but it’s definitely a different album (if you can even call this collection of previously unreleased tracks and raw studio rehearsal tapes an actual album). Where the Cheveu LP was clearly based in bluesy rock-and-roll—albeit it Casio-fueled, experimental bluesy rock-and-roll—Cheveau is distant, chilly post-punk separated by even more unintelligible sound jams. Underproduced. Hastily recorded. Scattered as fuck and nowhere near as warm and developed as, say, last year’s “Lola Langusta”. And yet, despite all that, a totally rad listen—if only because “Pangolin” so perfectly channels Joy Division’s “Digital”, and the campy, pounding-on-the-back-stairs of “Sacha” is like a jaunt through goth’s back catalogue. It may not be sophisticated, but Cheveu masterfully stretch from end to end of the niche they’ve created for Cheveau, exploiting the limitations of lo-fi noise in a way that encapsulates chaos into a fragment of order.

But no matter how purposeful, this sort of cheap-electro, garage/bedroom/wherever recording is easy to eff up. For all the perfectly plotted tracks like the atmospheric “Psyx”, there’s a ho-hum jam session like “Planet Camping” or the pseudo-parodic “Elvis”—not terrible songs by any stretch, but ultimately not worth repeating. Still, I’m stoked to hear what’s next from French lo-fi noise–it’s been seriously great so far.

- Rue Sauvage