Malajube - Labyrinthes

How would you like your prog pop sir? Served slightly overcooked with a side helping of French lyrics? Well, then this might be the album for you. On their aptly third album Labyrinthes, French Canadian four-piece Malajube unleash the proggy tendencies that were just about kept under control on their previous effort Trompe l’oeil. Like the Super Furry Animals at their most self-indulgent, the songs on Labyrinthes come slathered in all sorts of odd stuff. Opening tracks Ursuline and Porté disparu are good indicators of what follows. The first starts modestly with gentle music-box pianos before morphing steadily into a Muse shaped hulk of bombastic melody and power-pop guitars. It’s faintly ridiculous but it’s carried off with such cheery bravado that it’s hard to dislike. It is followed by the somewhat slight-sounding single Porté disparu,which, with its obvious barroom stomp, sounds like a strained concession to people looking for something as immediate as their previous hit Montréal -40’c. The rest of the album swings between poppy immediacy and over the top theatrics, tricked out with plenty of gaudy flourishes and ornate instrumental passages like the whooshing coda to Les collembas. After a while, it all gets a bit much, like the ELO playing an interval show at Cirque du Soleil. In other words, probably not everyone’s cup of tea.

At this point it’s probably worth considering the fact that Malajube sing entirely in their native Quebecoise French, making them one of the few bands to achieve a degree of popularity among an English-speaking fan base while singing in a different language. Their lush instrumentation and easy way with a melody probably go some way to account for this success. As with other groups who break the language barrier, such as Dungen and Sigur Ros, there is enough interesting noise going on beyond the words for the album to work. In fact, Malajube’s French lyrics are probably part of their appeal. As any fan of Sebastian Tellier knows, there can be something inherently fun about the French language when sung.

For the record, many of the song lyrics relate to the Catholic religion and its place in French Canadian culture. Apparently the boys aren’t too fond of le church. But to be honest, because of the band’s extravagant music styling, you can’t shake the feeling that it would be hard to take such lyrics seriously. A bright, over-inflated balloon of an album.