DEADFLY ENSEMBLE - A Seed Catalog For Extinct Annuals

Deadfly Ensemble is the solo side-project of Lucas Lanthier, better known as the singer of Cinema Strange, one of the most important goth outfits of the last decade. In the Deadfly Ensemble story, this new catalog of grim illustrated tales follows and markedly improves on the debut of two years ago; Lucas's artistic vein is inspired, free and joyful: compared to his main band, he leans even harder into a pronounced theatrical streak, descended from the masters Virgin Prunes and kin to dark entities like Sopor Aeternus and SexGang Children. Freed from compromises with the other two masterminds of Cinema Strange, Lucas also amplifies the murky, unstable hues stemming from his sweetly psychotic singing and from a particularly rich and varied musical backdrop.

"A Seed Catalog..." thus unfolds like a nocturnal wander through a long-abandoned Victorian funfair, a dusty stage on which the protagonists of tragic, buried stories are brought back to life in surreal vignettes like "Revenge on the Nursemaid" and the more muscular "Meaty Bones", the track closest to Cinema Strange with its accelerations bordering on death-rock, though arranged for a folk/chamber ensemble. A show performed with the lights off, a ballet of restless spirits, a catalog of cursed tales magically conjured by storyteller Lanthier, a kind of cross between Artaud, Stan Laurel and Gavin Friday, the album unwinds with eccentric elegance in every scene; each track is a small masterpiece of arrangement, straddling chamber-goth, art-rock, folk and much more.

Above it all are Lucas's querulous narrations, which succeed equally at fairy tale ("Polymelia And The Satyr") and at lively slice-of-life stories like the ethereal, heartfelt "Ursus Arktos The Bachelor" and the splendid piano ballad "The Adventures Of Jonas Mauken".

With the vibrant "Dirty Weather" he seems to invoke the protection of David Tibet, while a strong progressive aftertaste fuels the hallucinated visions of "Queen Maude's Pirates" and "Dishonest Corset". At the peak of his ambition, Lucas risks the long instrumental suite "Tiny Little Things", 15 minutes stuffed with slowly evolving "spectral" effects; yet, despite the wealth of resources deployed, this long trip through the haunted house surprises and engages far less than the rest of the album.

An album that is, in any case, a triumph of radiant, atmospheric dark ballads populated by a crowd of characters now fantastical, now tragically real, all of them lovable and grotesque; stories staged with great narrative and musical talent and with a sense of the macabre that's never obvious or cloying, but always in miraculous balance between the real, incurable torments of a Rozz Williams and the light, childlike irony of a Tim Burton. The overall result often surpasses Cinema Strange themselves, without indulging in too many contortions or special effects, aiming instead straight for the heart — and hitting it dead center.

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23/01/2008