Frustration

Our Decisions

Label: Born Bad

Genre: Dark / Post Punk / Gothic / Neo-Folk

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LP €21.99

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Bad news: Frustration is increasingly misrepresenting itself. We know where it's going from the very first bars, the Francilian gang isn't here to invent hot water or cold beer, and this is precisely what we were hoping for. Sa-tis-fac-tion (sorry). The relative classicism of this sixth album, "Our decisions", quenches the thirst of fans whose reputation is well established (and we're not talking about the record for bar takings at La Maroquinerie). Their music is driven by an initial desire that is sufficiently complex that its expression is never a repetition. Frustration doesn't teach music history, but that doesn't mean they don't know where they come from. The Born Bad stalwarts proudly bear the banner of our bastard post-punk, grain-fed, free-range, groomed crest, spurred to claw.

One of the great joys of listening to a band that's had time to figure out what it wants is that it plays together. The keyboards have six strings, the drummer has a mediator, the bass sings, no one's pulling their punches, and it shows. No doubt there are plenty of presets on his synths, but Fred Campo had to rip out what wasn't being used, and the result: no lasagna of layers, it's played like a scraper. That's all we ask, to find in a record what we hear in the concert hall.

Frustration, a band that defends with touching determination the right to keep a cool head - there's life outside the van - has, quite logically, a loyal following of virgins and she-wolves.
If this is your first knife, be confident: the quintet crafts its blades with the savoir-faire of a Thiers cutlery factory.

For snobs who roll on the floor when English is sung on the wrong side of the Channel, two tracks in French, "Omerta" and "Consumés", remind us that Fabrice Gilbert sings in an interlanguage that has kept the best of both idioms. It's the perfect way to savor his acid, no-holds-barred rants, which cut a swath through this "generation of apathetic truffles / fantasizing about assholes full of money". Losing my edge, my ass.
Produced in-house at Mains d'Oeuvres, premixed by guitarist Nicus, mixed by Jonathan Lieffroy, with Krikor on mastering: there's been a bit of a shift to port since their last album, So Cold Streams. The sound is less radically cold wave, and seeks a balance close to the instruments (the guitar plays inside your face, closer is in). There are traces of indus on the drum skins of "Riptide", tunnel produced like a banger, and sung like new wave.

Anne, from the Rouen combo Hammershøi, sings in germa, on "Vorbei", a rare moment of pause in this very intense record.
The cardio-packed drums of "Catching Your Eye" recall the joyful drone of "Shades from the past", an instrumental from their first album, and confirm, if confirmation were needed, that Mark Adolf forms a formidable tandem with Pat Dambrine on bass.

"Secular Prayer", which closes the album, confirms that Frustration are as much in the Ian Curtis family as they are in the Ian Dury family: it takes great care not to take themselves so seriously with such success.