Anenome Dreams

Brian Jonestown Massacre played a gig in Manchester last week, part of a UK tour that seems to have gone down very well. It's the umpteenth time I've missed Anton Newcombe, either with BJM or L'épée in recent years. I don't have a huge amount of the BJM back catalogue but what I do have is very good. This song in particular, and I think this is a fairly widely held opinion, is an absolute beauty...

Anenome

Shimmering, tripped out, wiggy, late 60s style psyche rock of the highest order, an acoustic guitar, a  tambourine for rhythm, a lead guitar playing a weaving, winding acid topline and lyrics, sung in a wonderful drawl about a departure, a kiss off- 'You should be picking me up/ Instead you're dragging me down... Glad that you're not around/ Glad that you're not around'. Anenome was on Their Satanic Majesties' Second Request, a Rolling Stones baiting album recorded in 1995 and released in 1996. 

Anton formed L'épée with Lionel and Marie Limiñana and singer/ actor Emnanuelle Seigner (who sticks in my memory from the 1988 film Frantic which she starred in with Harrison Ford). An album, Diabolique, came out in 2019, ten songs reimagining The Velvet Underground if they'd been from Paris rather than New York. 

Dreams

The Sword

Brand new, totally retro and full of dirty guitars, Velvets rhythms and Gallic cool come L'Epée. Lou is a tribute to Lou Reed and sounds exactly like a tribute to Lou Reed should...



Back in May L'Epée released Dreams, an organ led shake and crawl yé-yé number with a video taking us through Paris in the 60s, from Montmartre to the Eiffel Tower, the banks of the Seine, pavement cafes and then heading out of town. L'Epée, a four piece made up of Anton Newcombe, Emmanuelle Seigner and Lionel and Marie Liminana sound like they should be blaring from a car's radio or through the half open window of a first floor flat.

Shadow People

This is a new one from The Liminanas, a French duo whose stuff I've posted before- they did an excellent single last year with Hooky on bass (Garden Of Love). This one, Shadow People, has Emmanuelle Seigner on vocals, and has exactly the right amount of Gallic psychedelic buzz.

An e.p. called Istanbul Is Sleepy, recorded between their home in the South of France and Anton Newcombe's studio in Berlin is out in a couple of weeks with an album in 2018. The title track from the e.p. has been out since the end of September. It is a Velvets inspired blast and a total earworm. Le velours souterrain.