Le Couleur - Concorde

September 11, 2020 - Libson Lux Records

And millions in those solitudes, since first

The flight of years began, have laid them down

In their last sleep—the dead reign there alone.

—William Cullen Bryant, “Thanatopsis”

Montréal-based synth-pop trio Le Couleur’s new album Concorde is a technicolored tongue-in-cheek thanatopsis, a series of gothic ballads that glitter the beach before you because they are wrapped in a groovy dulcet dream of the 70s. Footprints in the sand guide your feet as you move forward into the landscape laid out before you to collect the gems. Listening is active but not strenuous, and it will lighten your mood while you befriend the small skull in the corner of your portrait painting. 

Le Couleur may trick you at first into thinking you’ve travelled back in time, but don’t be fooled—how they express their influences may give a first impression of a past-future vision, but when you sit with it you’ll find that the way they combine genres is very modern. The lyrics sing the shadowy existential poetry of deadly duels and tragic fates over disco synths, jazz chord structures, bossa nova percussion, funky bass, and rock-n-roll edge. A closer inspection will also reveal Classical and other mythological references for the intellectuals among us, a touch of ‘Space Oddity’ Bowie to keep us suspended, and a pinch of psychedelia a la Pink Floyd to incite a meditative state. The smart use of tonal shifts and key changes in each track keeps the compositional syntax epically monumental despite the levity of the instrumentation. It mitigates the risk of triteness when mashing up so many things recognizable. To say Le Couleur has mastered the art of genre-bending is an understatement. Their sound is something unexpected, something tropical and epicurean. It’s an existential discussion, but it doesn’t want you to think too hard about it. The music is upbeat in nature, dare I say fun. 

As the three musicians meditate on the circumstances and experience of death and tragedy (thematically inspired by Air France Flight 4590, the only fatal accident involving the luxurious supersonic Concorde from which the album derives its name), we dance to their catchy musical output and, if we’re feeling a tad cerebral, consider what it means to be the living who dance to it. Imagery of nature, of the body and of loss hypnotizes us into a beachy disco-trance dance to death that challenges our fears of it. Like a daydream from start to finish, it carries us away, explains itself, carries us further into the clouds, then drops us back down on Earth with new knowledge. The bass lines circle below awaiting our fall like sharks in the water. A synth that echoes a police siren reminds of terrestrial affairs. A sample of an ambient crowd peer pressures us out of screaming. Since death is a part of being alive, just as darkness requires light to have a name, maybe it’s something we can be comfortable dancing to after all.☔