By Todd Lavoie
It’s gonna hit! So says Montreal’s slinky experimentalists Feu Therese on the front of their new album, Ca Va Cogner (Constellation) – if my ever-rusting grasp of the French language serves me well. (Oh, my ancestors would be so proud.)
Now, I’m not sure if the “it” posed by the title is a sweaty funk-bomb or a seedy stab of gutter-synth – could be either, judging from the ample amounts of each being offered on its 37 fascinating minutes – but I reckon the not-knowing’s the whole idea: this Quebecois quartet seems to thrive on delivering the unexpected. Like a bucketload of bricks – that’s how it’s gonna hit, pumpkin, so duck and cover and let that heavy shit fall where it may. Me, I was blindsided. And it felt fantastic.
Fess-up time: I’m no expert on all of the intricate details of the willfully iconoclastic Constellation Records universe. (Yeah, a pun, I know.) I’ve adored the cinematic sturm-und-drang naysayers Godspeed You! Black Emperor from the get-go, and I’ve always enjoyed the elusive textures and chilling silences of Do Make Say Think, but there’s a hell of a lot of other stuff on that label I still have yet to hear. Fact is, I probably would’ve missed out on Feu Therese, too, if I hadn’t heard the last couple of tracks from Ca Va Conger playing in a record store recently. My point? Up until then, I’d always somehow expected the entire Constellations roster to be a pretty serious lot, all agitprop and clenched jaws – not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course, when it’s done eloquently and thoughtfully, which Godspeed et al. have managed all along. So, I was more than a bit bowled over by Feu Therese’s playfulness. There’s an anything-goes spirit at work here which leaves me with a satisfied smirk every time. Picture this: Serge Gainsbourg has hooked up with Talking Heads and Brian Eno – y’know, back during their fertile Fear of Music/ Remain in Light (Sire) collaborative heyday – to pay homage to Kraftwerk and Can and early-’70s Italian thriller soundtracks. What could be better, really?