As anyone who’s ever watched the 2004 rockumentary Dig! will tell you, the Brian Jonestown Massacre’s erratic genius of a front man Anton Newcombe is a movie star. You can’t peel your eyes off the guy. So it makes perfect sense that he’d want to make music with French film star and singer Emmanuelle Seigner, who just happens to be married to Roman Polanski. Together the twosome—along with French garage rock duo the Limiñanas—formed L’Épée and recorded a real stunner in 2019’s Diabolique.
On Diabolique L’Épée produce a diabolically heady mix of the Brian Jonestown Massacre’s enthralling melodies and druggy psychedelic drone, French lounge music, and Serge Gainsbourg-school Yé-yé. Think the Velvet Underground and Nico, with Seigner the sultry chanteuse filling in for everybody’s favorite Teutonic frost Mädchen. Newcombe—who no longer starts on-stage brawls with his own band, kicks audience members in the face, and mastered the art of sabotaging his own career chances—is at the top of his game.
As is Seigner, who’s no musical neophyte—she’s released a pair of solo pop albums as well as an album with the French band Ultra Orange. And the Limiñanas make for the ideal backing band–they’ve got that Brian Jonestown Massacre’ retro-futurism down pat, and leaven it with a healthy dose of Gainsbourg’s Gallic chic. Just check out their song “Dimanche,” which features French singer-songwriter, author and actor Bertrand Belin.
Most of the LP’s songs are sung in French, so if you’re language-impaired and big on meaning be prepared to make frequent visits to your favorite online translator. I’ve read that Lionel Limiñana wrote most of the lyrics as musical short stories in the spirit of Dino Risi, one of the most famous Italian film directors I’ve never heard of. But music, it hardly need be said, is un langue universelle, and on songs like LP topper “Springfield 61″—which you’ll find on the soundtrack to Emily in Paris—you won’t much care if you don’t understand a word coming out of Seigner’s bouche française.
Me, I assumed it was a salute to Dusty Springfield, but a rough translation informs me the Springfield 61 of the song’s title is a Civil War-era rifle. The song itself is pure pop bliss, what with its cosmopolitan pop élan, luscious melody, sleigh bells and tambourine, and gigantic Phil Specter backdrop, and is guaranteed to take you higher than the Eiffel Tower. “Dreams,” with its driving beat, retro-psych feel, and big guitar attack is damn near perfect too, especially when you lay Seigner’s lush vocals on top of it. This is the Brian Jonestown Massacre for the space age bachelor pad Stereolab set, as is the bass and percussion-heavy drone “La Brigade Des Maléfices,” which Seigner chic talks her way through like Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot do “Bonnie and Clyde.”
“Lou” is a titanic reverberating drone with a colossal bottom and presumably about Lou Reed—or Lou Ferrigno, they have a lot in common—and has Seigner repeating “Je perds espoir” (“I’m losing hope”) and tossing off lines like “ C’est la joie musicale ici on te voit trouble/J’aurais fondu de voir un indien te suivre” (rough Google translation “It’s musical joy here we see you troubled/I would have melted to see an Indian follow you”). Which, if the song is indeed about Velvet Lou, raises wondrous possibilities—I like to imagine him being followed down Lexington Avenue by Mahatma Gandhi, who keeps calling “Lou! Why the Iron Cross haircut? It’s a fashion atrocity!” And speaking of India, the percussion that percolates through the slow-winding “Grande” is pure plastic exploding New Delhi and will make you want to say “Please pass the chutney, Lou.”
“Une Lune Étrange” features a big reverberating guitar and a King Kong drumbeat and sounds a bit like what you’d get is you shot “All Tomorrow’s Parties” full of methamphetamines and revitalizing vitamins then told Nico to to go make The Marble Index or something. “I’m Captain groovy, never gon’ harm me,” sings Seigner, “But then I fight the rain/I don’t care/I don’t care.” Cool. The slow drone “On Dansait Avec Elle” is a bit too low energy for my tastes and is all exotic percussion and has Louis Limiñana and Seigner singing together and in general couldn’t be more French if it surrendered to the Germans. Meanwhile, the haunting “Ghost Rider” proceeds at a stately pace and is all echo; Seigner sings (en anglais) “Ghost riders, baby/I’m burning my head/Yes, I’m dead/I’m dead/Baby, I’m dead/Dead.”
“Un Rituel Inhabituel” has Seigner singing lush nonsense syllables throughout and will send you into a trance, then blow your mind when the song swells and swells like the sea singing in its chains, which is an image I stole from Dylan Thomas but am going to pretend I didn’t. Closer “Last Picture Show” pounds its way into your head, kind of like “I’m Waiting for the Man” but with more get up and go; the guitar riff is epic, and I love the lines “I’m gonna lose you/My baby doll/Chemical bodies/For a New York dawn.” Or maybe it’s “a New York Doll,” which would be even cooler.
It’s impossible to know if the foursome who make up L’Épée will come together again to make another record—they’re all busy people and four years have passed since the release of Diabolique, so I’m not holding my breath. Which is too bad, because their blend of French-American influences musicales is utterly unique, sophisticated music for sophisticated people who take sophisticated acid and hallucinate commedia all’italiana.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
