Reviews

Born Bad

Frustration So Cold Streams LP

Legendary French post-punk group FRUSTRATION returns with their first LP since 2016. Keeping in tune with a sound the band has cultivated over two decades, this record is a dissonant, dark, and synth-based take on post-punk. Imagine SUICIDE meets JOY DIVISION mixed with elements of LCD SOUNDSYSTEM. These tracks take their time, building and falling with a lot of grace and dynamics. There are moments of quiet bliss mixed with moments of unrestrained chaos. A track like “Brume” brings a real industrial or almost No Wave sound in the vein of Filth-era SWANS. Those No Wave moments give the record a really abrasive and caustic feel. A unique and interesting release in the FRUSTRATION discography, definitely worth checking out, at least for the die hard post-punk fans.

Les Calamités Encore! 1983–1987 LP

LES CALAMITÉS are too often reduced to having been “the French GO-GO’S”—three teenage girls with guitars (plus a boy drummer) who rejected the plastic excess of mid-’80s new wave in favor of sugary (power) pop and ’60s girl group-styled harmonies. But the GO-GO’S started out as bona fide L.A. punks, even if those roots were obscured in their sound, while LES CALAMITÉS might as well have emerged from an almost entirely pre-punk world of early twist-and-shout rock’n’roll, sock hop shimmies, and mod garage beat; “the French DELMONAS” would probably be more accurate. Encore! gathers all sixteen tracks from their modest discography (an LP, a couple of singles, and a comp cut), plus a song each from French rockers DOGS and English garage outfit the BARRACUDAS featuring LES CALAMITÉS backing vocals; it’s a tidy primer on these filles dans le garage, even if it doesn’t add anything new to the story. Those GO-GO’S comparisons come most clearly into focus on “Le Supermarché,” “Pas la Peine,” and “Toutes Les Nuits,” all of which nail that ebullient Beauty and the Beat bounce, and just as the DELMONAS did, there’s a handful of CALAMITÉS-ized takes on choice ’60s cuts, further paying tribute to some of their obvious inspirations—the WHO’s “The Kids Are Alright” sped up as an ecstatic jangler, the AD-LIBS’ doo wop classic “The Boy From New York City” translated into French and given a yé-yé spin, a gender-swapped version of the TROGGS’ bubblegum garage nugget “With a Girl Like You.” C’est un délice.