V

Description

Crushing bass lines and primal drums held together by a raw, uncontrollable voice that mumbles and shouts over furious guitars. The frenetic energy of tracks like “Ah!” and “Swinging Man” is counterbalanced by shadowy interludes that give the album body. Influenced by Laurence's youth in France and the rainy skies of Paris, the yéyé sketches of "V" wander across the grayish expanse of social alienation, suburban paralysis, and bourgeois narcissism. It is a desperate ode to the repressed energy of the people and the potential for collective anger. The 11 unstable ballads of Wasser, far removed from the primitive disco-trash of his beginnings, nevertheless retain the same joyful and addictive fury, and add a layer of grimy gloom for the dark days under the gray sky of the Fifth Republic, that of Bouygues houses, Ouigo trains, and simmering anger.