If I compared the two previous albums of Sans Arc to artists like Slowdive, Sigur Ros, Cocteau Twins, Windy and Carl, Worrytrain or World’s End Girlfriend, for the ethereal coldness and atmospheric shoegaze dimensions, “when eyes meets eyes” is a different story. Something completely changed in the way Craig Christo writes and records songs. It’s not dramatically different, but with a few subtle changes in his sound, he reached a powerful and amazing alchemy. We are now somewhere between Chuzzlewit and Appleseed Cast, not too far from Khonnor or The London Apartments.
The ingredients are quite usual and generic: beats, programmed and looped drums, typical shoegaze processed guitars, intimate folk guitar, layers of sound, and melancholic, shy, adolescent vocals. But now the coldness is gone and has been replaced by bright, warm ambiences and dynamic, addictive melodies.
Honestly there is nothing absolutely new or original in the way Sans Arc creates his “songscapes” but the result is systematically extremely efficient and truly convincing. Listening to Sans Arc is like being plunged into a high level oxygen environment, with euphoric sensations, wonderful landscapes, heavenly light, intense happiness and endlessly moving feelings. The closest comparison would be a solo version of Appleseed Cast circa “Low level Owl” or an intimate lo-fi version of Slowdive circa “Souvlaki”.
“When eyes meets eyes” is 73 minutes long but from begin to end there is no real weak points, the first two thirds of the album are simply breathtaking, one hit after another, while on the last third, Craig explores a more ambient oriented approach that gives us the opportunity to land up peacefully.
An instrumental, “Medecine Gun” introduces the album perfectly and then we are lost into a rarely seen non-stop linking of eight equally successful gems: “Captain, you will be the end of us all”, “There is no way for us to win this time”, “Blue Panic”, “Run with me into the fire”, “The grey morning”, “Mountaintops”, “Oh Juliette! Tonight your name is poison” (my favorite one!) and “The falling sky”.
After such an implacable demonstration, the last five atmospheric and more pensive songs have to be taken as an extra, where Craig Christo explores more ambient areas like on the experimental side of “Low Level Owl’ and not too far from some direction of the last Slowdive album “Pygmalion”.
On this third album, Sans Arc has finally developed all the promises of “Irradiate” and “Ghostlike”, with the impressive achievement of a majestic shoegaze album, without any doubt, enthusiastically and thumbs up, already one of my favorite 2007 albums.
|
imprimer
envoyer à un ami
raw translation
: recommandé par dérives