THE CHAP - Mega Breakfast

Crouched in front of our stereos, we ask ourselves what's still worth listening to. The answer could be everything or nothing, depending on individual leanings. There probably aren't many "necessary" things in 2008, but it can still happen that we're struck by lightning. As is the case with this "Mega Breakfast".

Not since El Guapo's masterpiece, "Fake French", have such heights of compositional imagination been touched. Then again, it's no great surprise given the splendid flashes of vision The Chap have treated us to in the past.

Already back at the time of their debut "The Horse", the band had carved out a decent slice of interest, as the record skilfully blended art-disco, taut rock and digital textures. Despite the quality of the material, the album passed almost unnoticed. In 2005, however, the overflowing "Ham" broke through the wall of anonymity with its eccentric, disorienting electronics. Over a solid wave and punk-funk base (Talking Heads above all), cascades of digital rhythms and instrumentals were grafted on, all spun through a ridiculously short runtime (2:30, an average bordering on hard-core), a major aid to overall accessibility and a focal point of their music.

Their variety and unwillingness to repeat themselves allowed the band to put together countless little pieces built on killer choruses, backed 90% of the time by an irresistible, inescapable melody. Even in the examples that seemed more conventional, a pattern or a noise placed at just the right spot would crystallize the genius of the moment, lending the rest of the composition an aura of genuine beatification. The lyrical side of their art translates the sadistic naivety that bubbles up from words picked up in some interview, words and feelings entirely personal to them. They say they want to immortalize the most bizarre things that at first seem banal or irrelevant, adapt them to the song in question, and put it all together. The result of this oddball songwriting philosophy is an utterly instinctive and impulsive approach, at times frenzied, but always lucidly crazed and calculated.

The new "Mega Breakfast" is the sublimation and the objective high point of The Chap's art. Shrewdly and meticulously gathering up the most positive sides of the two previous records, the new effort takes shape as a perfect confluence of those two streams, blended and polished to a finish. The impossibility of precisely pinning down what we're about to hear once we put the record on is made clear by the constant gear changes; nevertheless, high-impact funky extractions can be dug up pretty much everywhere, as can the love of group vocals, which, as it happens, was a trademark of the aforementioned "Fake French".

Listening to the techno-pop anthem "They Have A Name" feels like being plunged right back into the 80s synth-pop era, but there's no need to be surprised: it all fits perfectly. The sonic destabilizations that crop up here and there resurface in the surprising "Fun And Interesting", an over-the-top bomb and the album's single, to put on the stereo when you're hunting for a hurricane of emotions. The pulsing blasts of "Caution Me" stab like a jam between the Pop Group and any given synth-band; "Carlos Walter Wendy Stanley" follows the previous track's timbral ups and downs with inserts of guitar riffing bordering on indecency; the fury with which stasis and choral confusion alternate is nothing short of miraculous.

The bittersweet blend of "Surgery" shines with a trembling, disturbed light, the calmer, more subdued "Take It In The Face" is minimal synth-pop, a soundtrack for a futurist noir film; the indefinable "Ethnic Instrument" is an unlikely mix of trash vocals, a lopped-off rhythm section, and very brief guitar samples.

"Proper Rock" wavers indecisively between emaciated rock tensions and a vitriolic pop shaken by electronic waves; techno hiccups paint the haunting "The Health Of Nations", which feeds on some very particular concrete extracts. The closing "Wuss Wuss" and "I Saw Them" add further elements to disorient the listener, already sufficiently overloaded with material to process and digest.

If originality has a definition, this certainly isn't it, but the fact remains that we're faced with something quite close to it: a band with unexpected potential and a flair that's rarely found in much of the music served up to us every day, from January right through to the year's end.

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06/05/2008