VACUUM SEALED (vinyl)

Description

For five months, it was night. When Benjamin Dupont woke up, the sun had already been below the horizon for hours. Between 10 PM and 4 AM, secretly locked away in Studio S**** with Marc Portheau, they piled up guitars, flipped amps, refined riffs, simplified arrangements, and made decisions. In the early morning, Lauriane Petit would see Benjamin returning as she left for work. Without a word, he would lie down. The sun would beat down on his eyelids while, in his mind, the journey continued: the bits of music he had recorded all night would slip into his dreams. No drugs were needed to record 'Vacuum Sealed'. The intensity of the ten songs that make up the album was enough to make the rest of the world disappear. The music is so massive, its presence so thick, that after a month of work, Benjamin and Marc couldn't even talk to each other anymore. Everything was already there, in front of them. 'Vacuum Sealed' was going to become an absolute classic. One of the cornerstones of their generation, they who also have - or have had - a foot in Villejuif Underground, Pleasure Principle, Bisous de Saddam, Dame Blanche... Like all great albums, it opens with a screaming introduction ('Greeting From The Space Boys', a middle finger raised by the entire band from the stratosphere - i.e. Lauriane Petit on bass and vocals, Raphael Berrichon and Medhi Briand on guitars, Paul Ramon on drums), strings together mind-blowing songs ('Excuses' sung by Lauriane like a Kim Deal composition, 'Sad Toys' or the paroxysm of dancing melancholy, 'Pictures Of You' or the best guitar riff ever played with a vibrato) before leaving you hanging by a thread. At this stage of the record, one thinks that Bryan's Magic Tears would be the gifted child of The Jesus & Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine and Primal Scream. In 1991, this side of an album would have been recorded by a British band and released by Creation. Except that it's thirty years later, it's made by a band with a Norman soul, and it's released by Born Bad Records. So you have to flip the record. 'I don't want to be 33 and play Teenage Rock with a backward cap and denim shorts.' After flexing their muscles on one side of the album, Benjamin Dupont digs deeper into his own veins and transfigures his band. They were taken for drugged slackers, a band that makes noise because they have three guitars on stage, slackers singing nonsense. The B-side of 'Vacuum Sealed' features three autobiographical pop songs with absolutely impeccable lyrics and melodies. In 'Tuesday' - 'a song about when it's Tuesday and you have zero serotonin because you took pills all weekend' - 'Isolation' and 'Always', despite the drum machines and that false air of lightness, it's the fan of The Smiths who speaks. The great melody maker. 'I think the biggest difference between Bryan's Magic Tears and other bands of our kind is that many bands forget that they are going to sing over their music.' One last demonstration of overpowered production later - 'Superlava' - and there you have it: you thought Bryan's Magic Tears were doing drugs to make music to get high. In fact, they do the opposite. They compose a repertoire that will outlive them, surpass them, which one can already imagine in the mouths and on the fingers of future generations who will rediscover this amazed album. Because 'Vacuum Sealed' will be that. One of the guitar classics of the early 20s. And there's nothing we can do about it. Their talent is too great.