Alcest "Shelter"

Never one to shy away from music sung in a different language, I found this French band on a world chart with the descriptor"shoegaze" next to it.  Shoegaze means a lot of different things to different people and for me it means standing still on a stage while stepping on a bastion of effects pedals on the floor and a singer/moaner vocalizing unintelligible words.  Bands like Ride, Curve and Chapterhouse are a few in my collection.  Intrigued by a current band labeled with a twenty-five year-old subgenre, I bought it.  Yep, I can be that easy.

And there you have it...a wall of sound with that chiming, ringing guitar à la U2 and dredg, soft vocals buried in the mix enough to question what language they were in....certainly the audio portion of "shoegaze."  Let me look for a live clip for the visual definition...



Eh, not really standing around staring at the floor, huh?  This clip also exposes much of what I learned during research.  This album is the band's fourth long-player and the earlier ones were called "black metal" and "blackgaze."  Yeah, I'm not fond of being screamed at or vomited upon by a vocalist so no, I didn't miss anything from the earlier records.  I understand why some longtime fans are disillusioned by this new release, though.  One reviewer I generally agree with calls it "a gorgeous-sounding record, almost perfectly paced and balanced...expertly crafted, inspired, vulnerable, and honest."  I wouldn't go quite that far but it is an enjoyable listen.  This is the only official video I could find...



That is fairly indicative of the overall feel of the album.  A thread of sameness runs through it on an end-to-end play so I'm going to keep the three longer tunes for my mp3 player and radio concept.  Apparently they play all of them in their live set so here is one...



They must play in the dark............maybe they ARE "shoegaze" now....