L'Exil Loin Des Slows

Description

Founded around novelist Jean-Pierre Montal, Les Mercuriales release their second album, titled L’exil loin des slows, on May 29. The improvisations of their first album meet a more melodic vein here, carrying lyrics crafted like short stories. Some bands saturate the space, others dissolve only to reappear in a new guise. Les Mercuriales belong to this category. A variable-geometry formation, rarely seen in concert and known for never playing a track the same way twice, Les Mercuriales return with a weighty record. Les Mercuriales isolate themselves in a loft in Ivry-sur-Seine, with Vincent Hivert (En Attendant Ana, Biche) and Paul Rannaud (Fat White Family, Insecure Men), to forge a raw sound, nourished by the unexpected arrangements of keyboards from Sophie Massa (À trois sur la plage) and Frédéric Collay. The result is a unique collection of tracks ranging from the uncontrolled free escapade of the saxophones of Stanislas de Miscault (Entracte Twist, Crush of Soul), to the song/short story, all the way to a heart-wrenching slow dance. All carried by a sort of crooner exhausted by bills, current events, and unanswered messages piling up on his phone. "La Face Nord" opens the album and immediately sets the tone: guitars in the style of The Band and lyrics conceived as an extension of the eponymous novel by Jean-Pierre Montal (Prix des deux magots 2024), chronicling an impossible love. The song presents itself as a kind of epilogue to the novel, as if its main character were rethinking, several months later, the breakup recounted in the book. This introspective atmosphere continues with "L’autre nuit", an insomniac plunge into muted tensions, where the influence of the later Talk Talk is felt. Further on, "La méthode Canadair" and "Stars du muet" explore escape and incommunicability, while this last track welcomes the album's first guest, Nathanaëlle Hauguel of Ellah A. Thaun. Flipping the record, En circuit court captures a raw and unrepeatable tension, while Jill Caplan lends her voice to "Mode d’emploi du monde". The album closes with "L’exil loin des slows", a slow dance, a real one, to hold someone you love close and dance on the blaze of the times. The circle is complete, against a backdrop of clear guitars, airy keyboards, and dreamy flutes, in the image of this luminous and melancholic album that will henceforth be part of our lives.