LES DISCRETS - Prédateurs

Only when expectations aren't too high is there enough room left to be surprised: years of listening to all kinds of music teach you never to go in with preconceptions, even when elements come into play that could potentially undermine an already lukewarm proposition.

When Les Discrets first appeared on the international scene, post-rock was already on the downward slope of its arc: still, they managed to stand out thanks to their French vocals, following in the wake of the far more celebrated Alcest and somehow building a small cult following parallel to Neige's band.

At this point it would be ungenerous, as well as crude, to split their career in two and start afresh from “Prédateurs”: because while it's true that several electronic-leaning influences surface here (a more than familiar occurrence these days), it must also be acknowledged that nothing has been lost of the instrumentation or the shadowy esprit of their earlier work.

Frontman Fursy Teyssier describes it as music for “those moments when we usually think about the meaning of life and of things, when we have nothing else to do but sit and wait”. What prevails is indeed a velvety, almost caressing sound, one that shifts its gaze from the decadence of gothic interiors to desolate urban vistas, like the nightly rounds of a silent, resigned taxi driver.

The trip-hop rhythm that immediately asserts itself in “Virée Nocturne” is in fact just one of the souls running through the stylistic range amassed over five years of quiet activity (the previous album, “Ariettes Oubliées…”, dates back to 2012). The distorted guitar on “Le Reproche” echoes the descriptive precision of Sommacal in Massimo Volume, while “Rue Octavio Mey” borrows the martial gait of a certain strain of neofolk not unfamiliar to other artists on the same Prophecy roster. But in more than one passage, the sound formula closely recalls the high-definition art-rock of post-2000 Ulver, polished and solemn like an everlasting monument (on the English-sung “Vanishing Beauties” and “The Scent Of Spring” the resemblance is especially striking).

Someone could reasonably object that most of these stylistic references also belong to an era whose glories are now long gone. Still, now as then, it's not worth dwelling on just how derivative Discrets' approach may be: in substance, “Prédateurs” proves to be a record that's perhaps not surprising, but certainly solid enough to merit one or more listens in this final pseudo-autumnal stretch — the only thing here that's truly behind the times.

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10/05/2017