3 out of 5

Label: Murailles Music, Le Confort Moderne

Produced by: Greg Saunier (mixed by, mastered by)

Extra points should be allotted to this for ambition, with Deerhoofer Greg Saunier contracted to write a piece for ensemble supergroup La Colonie de Vacances – to my understanding, members of Pneu, Marvin, Papier Tiger, and Electric Electric, convening for live performances in which group members are arranged at cardinal directions of a square – but as a “single” song stretched over the course of 40 minutes, things perhaps inevitably go astray.

The grounding here is definitely the noisy guitar pop of Deerhoof, but Saunier gives plenty of room for the math-y antics of the many other players on the scene: Greg executes some sonorous, roots riffage over which he occasionally “la la”s, and the Vacances crew supports with music that veers to different corners of instrumental post-rock: there’s some of the mechanized rock of Turing Machine; the angular, muscular stuff found in some of Colonie’s individual acts like Papier Tiger; the stuttery bass / drums Don Cabness of French math stalwarts Chevreuil; and the meeting ground of much of this – a melodic time-changey, boppy flow I associate with the Texas indie scene, like Ghosts and Vodka. This meeting ground logically forms a lot of the stitching, with the composition coming back to Deerhoof punch (and Saunier’s intonations) to refocus on a theme, which allows the group to play off of one another in fits and spurts.

This is magical for almost half the record. Deerhoof’s kind of cutesy match up of noise and pop has never quite worked for me, but the broadness of this collab (if just in terms of number of participants) seems to naturally work past that, creating a balance of incredibly catchy moments that get iterated on inventively and powerfully. I think this is probably still close to Deerhoof (especially early stuff), but a bit more… operatic, if we’re writing operas for math-rock.

As an attemptedly continuous work, though, it starts to run thin past the midpoint. There’s a nice “trick” of relative pauses throughout that probably gives players a break, while never staying too far away from getting things going, and even when there’s a dense pause at about 21-minutes, it’s to lead into some utter chaos that hits good and hard. But it keeps going. It keeps stopping and starting, and it feels like an open page: Saunier just telling the team to play what they feel. While this arguably pays off by returning to established themes, that’s a trick we’ve heard several times over by this point in the recording, which makes one feel like we’re just stretching to meet an LP-filling runtime. (I mean, that dense pause just happens to be a good point to flip the LP over…)

I want to underline that the recording is lots of fun throughout, and definitely mixed / recorded like a studio production- except for crowd appreciation at moments, you’d have no idea this is live. Also, a reminder that I initially praised the ambition: Saunier’s orchestration of this is an awesome accomplishment of wrangling, and the A-side is a triumphant piece of work – loud, celebratory, and unrelenting. The B-side is where it prattles on too much, and drops immersion for a bit of an improv-y wank session. Still fun, just not as satisfying, though I appreciate having the midpoint as a method of distinction.