3 out of 5

Label: Coolax, Epicericords, Jarane, L’étourneur, Araki, GED, Hidden Bay, Super Apes, Do It Youssef !, Les Clampins D’Abord, Burning Sound Records

Produced by: L’ostral

Five or so years and an equal amount of albums in to their ever-morphing indie rock experiment, Chafouin land somewhere between the polished pop or OKGO and the scrappiness of Pavement with Toufoulcan, dallying with the band’s appreciation for feller-filleresque noise.

That equals about half an album of toe-tapping rockers, and half an album of sketches of sorts, or kind of softpawed 00s Matador indie rock that’s maybe a bit too precious in comparison to some of Chafouin’s more experimental works. I mean, I think as soon as you’re naming a track ‘Post Post Rock,’ things are getting suspect.

The A-side of Toufoulcan gains a lot of ground: pairing a meaty low-end with some interestingly reedy guitar makes for a kind of unsettling pop, a rather fitting variation for the band. Alternating between vocal and instrumental tracks, there’s nothing especially memorable, but every song has a hook and shows flashes of teeth here and there. At the center, we get ‘This eat,’ which has almost surf-y momentum, like a lost Astro-Man track, and then En Silence kind of shifts us over into the lighter weight pop that dominates the album’s back half, albeit with a bit of a post-rock coda to justify its 5-minute runtime.

Thereafter, though, that ‘lighter weight’ is kind of make or break: it’s a bit too twee for my taste, and turns Chafouin’s kind of off-hand song structure into something truly fleeting feeling. Songs that surprised with some sneaky edge on the A-side now just peter out after a few minutes.