Clara Clara - "Baise main" (2008)

My favorite music-related French word is batteur, drummer. Batteur—like its obvious English cognates batter and battering—more appropriately conveys, in my opinion, the visceral physicality of playing the drums. The drummers I like the most, from Keith Moon to Dave Grohl to Mike Joyce to Mo Tucker, all battered their kit, flailing away with primal spastic exuberance that typically puts the other (perhaps more orderly) timekeepers of their respective eras to shame.

François Virot, mastermind behind the 3-piece Dijon-based band Clara Clara, is a batteur of the highest order. He batters, bashes, and beats all over his kit like he’s got four arms holding two drumsticks each. The sweat he works up drenches the band’s full-length debut, “AA,” in a wild sizzle. Bandmates—no slouches—are brother Charles Virot, whose loosely-strung bass guitar sounds like a 6-string guitar being lovingly strangled by a doomed suitor in a star-crossed tragedy, and Amélie Lambert, whose analog synths conjure the soundtrack to a ravenous 8-bit go-go videogame that no one but her can win. Collectively, they concoct a joyful, noisy racket that eschews lyrics and vocals save for some three-way, blissed-out chants and shouts.

Kicking off with a splendidly distorted organ line, album highlight “Baise main” lurches with jittery intensity for several seconds before the bass and drums tumble in. The jumpy song shifts textures, rhythms, and melodies several times; the stops and starts recall the Pixies at their most neurotic, or an overstimulated four-year-old unable to decide what to play with in a roomful of toys. Clara Clara summon a mischievous tension that builds to a dizzy head until the song crashes to an exhausted end. Hot.

The crackling sound that you hear, by the way, is the electric excitement here at the Pop de trop offices as we await the imminent, mid-March release of Clara Clara’s second album, “Comfortable Problems,” on the Paris label Clapping Music. Can’t wait!

click the image below to listen to song previews or buy the album:

The Dø - "At Last!" (2008)

I’d been listening to the Dø’s bountiful 2008 debut “A Mouthful” for a while when “At Last” snuck up on me as the stand-out track. I had originally been drawn to the album’s moody, almost sinister ballads (“When Was I Last Home?” really creeps me out) when the joyful lilt of “At Last” finally pounced. The syncopated, Frusciante-inflected guitar strums over an unhurried shaker and tambourine rhythm while singer Olivia Merilahti gushes about finally finding true love. Listen more closely and the song’s lyrics betray an emotional yo-yo: “I want to tell the whole world / But I won't say no more / No I won't make it harder on you girls.” The guilt about abandoning her still-single friends for her man doesn’t quite overwhelm Merilahti’s helium-voiced ecstasy, however. And then the bombshell slips: she’s only just met the guy! “Been walking on air for the last 92 hours.” The triangle and finger-cymbals, meanwhile, chime knowingly.

Parisian instrumentalist Dan Levy and Finnish singer Olivia Merilahti met while working on the film score for “Empire of the Wolves.” They collaborated on the music for several other films before joining forces as the Paris-based two-piece indie rock band the Dø. The two first letters of their given names inspired the band’s moniker; their initial path-crossing while recording songs for films continues to permeate their work as a band. As the stacked narratives in “At Last” illustrate, the Dø certainly know how to infuse their songs with complex, cinematic moods. The Dø artfully weave atmospheric story-telling across a variety of musical styles throughout “A Mouthful:” the mischievous jump rope sing-along of “Playground Hustle;” the Lady Sovereign-esque scenery-chewing hip-hop of “Queen Dot Com;” the ukulele and Snow White-style backing choir of “Stay (Just A Little Bit More),” the Finnish-language folk freak-out of “Unissasi Laulelet.” It’s obvious that the Dø aren’t interested in honing a single sound.

Reaching #1 on the French album charts the first week of release back in 2008, “A Mouthful” is finally getting a US release next month courtesy of Six Degrees Records. Here’s hoping it comes laden with bonus tracks; the Dø, I’m certain, have plenty more stories to tell.

click the image below to listen to song previews or buy the album: