2 out of 5

Label: Africantape

Produced by: Alexandre Garacotche

There was a Texas indie rock label called SixGunLover that released an album by a band called Les Messieurs Du Rock; it’s not a bad bit of boogie, but could be described as, essentially, what you’d expect a completely stereotyped French indie rock band to sound like – a little bit of glam, dusted with punk, combined with a kind of too-cool-for-school college rock vibe. Ned are kind of like that, only it’s not played as a joke in the way Messieurs was. That makes the influences similar but different, with the SGL release giving the game away with some hardcore and math nods, whereas Ned’s love for 70s punk – like Television – and some of their rather tired subject matter ends up preventing them from having much of their own sound. To be fair, the band is good at what they’re doing, it’s just hard to get away from it sounding like mimicry to an extent; even then, the indie rock noodly add-ons to this template are where it becomes kind of make or break.

On the A-side of ‘Bon Sauvage,’ the group remains pretty focused: it’s a light, scrappy, old-school punk sound, with Die!Die!Die! nasally vocal delivery and somewhat anti-authority / class-consciousness lyrics that do a good job of not just saying the thing, though have a tinge of youth to them – like being overly poetic at points (if you’ll allow a refrain of ‘bigger penisses’ (sic) as being poetic). The avoidance of straight-up rocking out, which is the indie noodly bit, holds things back here, but still, the A-side isn’t necessarily notable, but it works.

The B-side kind of forces the two influences to extremes, though, with both the 70s and college rock influences becoming equally strong, and not playing as well together. So what was acceptably rocking now becomes discordant, which makes the whole project less convincing. The lyrics start to seem cringey instead of potentially creative; any nice riff gets criticized as not coming soon enough or being defined enough.

Ned is the kind of band that if you discover early into your musical journey, I imagine opens up some new avenues for exploration. Bon Sauvage definitely supports that the band has a nice selection of 70s and 90s rock influences, and plays a generally pleasing mix of loose, punky tunes. But it’s music that takes too liberally from those influences, making it less memorable in comparison, and to the extent of being almost distracting when it gets too indulgent as the album goes on. More positive reviews of the album consider it a sort of “best of” of Ned’s sound, and I guess that is essentially what I’m hearing: a surface skimming of what went into stronger past works – whether from this band, or from the many that led to this band.