4 out of 5

Label: Pagans, Murailles Music, Les Disques du Festival Permanent

Produced by: Ernest Bergez

The solo alias for French art-popster Ernest Bergez, Sourdure’s De Mòrt Viva finds the artist on the playful side of the art-rock spectrum, upping electro beats and teaming up with fellow scenesters to create a collaborative, mixed-medium collection of tunes.

While melody is central to every song on De Mòrt Viva – which, roughly translated to Long Live the Dead provides some interesting tonal framework to the album – we are very much carried by Bergez’s soulful voice, whether teamed with various co-vocalists or going solo, and across more acoustic or more fully fleshed out tunes.

Experimentation has been a big part of Sourdure’s oeuvre up to this point, and Viva is not without that, but it’s closer to a pop album, relying heavily on big beats and plunking instrumentation for small, 3-4 minute tunes. An air of sadness tickles the edges of the album, with dour instrumental opener Trevia and the sparse Rondaleira seeming to set up something more singer-songwritery, but when La Rupture’s drums kick in, the album builds and builds up to midpoint noisefest Clavar Cava, which highlights a sort of sneaky m.o.: a catchy, bass-heavy backbone and hummable / memorable theme, while all sorts of electronic and instrumental flourish gets busy on the sidelines. In other words, it’s highly experimental, but under the guise of pop.

The second half of the album sinks in to more direct dourness: electronic loops; minimalist approaches; slocore beats; but the lead-in to this kind of inures you to that sadness, warming us up to “celebrate” the gloom.

Lyrically, not speaking French and with only one song have printed lyrics, I can only further guess at themes from song titles, but there does seem to be a pairing of organic elements with disruptive or subversive vibes – La Rupture, for example, perhaps describing a breakup in grandiose, nature-oriented terms. This is surely way off target, but the music supports pushing and pulling a listener in two directions: get contemplative, get a little moody, but also get up and dance.

Though a little light on true singles – Sourdure will get going on a track, then cut out once it really gets moving – that same sense of motion, and subversive experimentation around the album’s catchy beats and melodies, provides for a highly interesting and repeatable listen. …Hopefully / probably all the more if you speak the language!