ZINCS - Black Pompadour

"Black Pompadour", the third album by the Chicago band The Zincs, led by English-born James Elkington, fully confirms what was already evident on their previous record, "Dimmer", now a couple of years old. Once again produced by John McEntire, the songs that make up this effort are highly elegant and well arranged. Aided on three tracks by the vocal contribution of Edith Frost, Elkington, with his warm, seductive, so very British singing, tells stories steeped in dark atmospheres, pairing them with refined, uptempo sounds in which guitars and synths take centre stage. Unfortunately, just as happened with the band's previous collection, the sound, too monochromatic and at times heavy-handed, tied to certain purely Chicago stylistic traits, makes the album difficult to take in as a whole, even though the individual songs hold up perfectly well on their own. Standing out above the rest are the lovely duet "Rice Scars", enlivened by Frost's voice, the following "The Mogul's Wife", whose sound can be likened to that of refined conceptual-pop bands such as Aluminum Group or Sea and Cake, and the ballad "Dave The Slave", where the band finally produces more rarefied, delicate sounds, reaching the peak of their output.

Perhaps, with its taste for never-banal arrangements and its echoes of certain post-rock and a kind of Tom Verlaine-style "psychedelia", this album remains more a matter for refined connoisseurs of the rock idiom than for fans of carefree pop.

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06/06/2007