When opening track proper ‘My Black Sabbath’ kicks in, The Limiñanas (I still keep wanting to call them Les Limiñanas..) seem set on replicating the formula that made last year’s Crystal Anis such a hit: minimal, tambourine-heavy percussion, an insidiously funky bass-line, languorous Francophone vocals and that weird, banjo-sounding thing (is it like, a zither or something?) - the requisite ingredients are all here for another fine example of their trademark sound, and indeed you’ll likely find yourself pulling your Fedora down over your eyes, traversing the back alleys of Montmartre, within seconds, regardless of where you happen to be listening.

With that reassuringly confident flashback to the last album is out of the way though, the band proceed to follow a somewhat different muse over the space of the next 40-odd minutes, largely ditching the melodic pop element of their sound as they delve even deeper into the world of ‘60s French kitsch to create a more brooding, groove-heavy, early-‘70s-crime-movie-soundtrack type confection, so transparent in its stylistic intent that they might as well have put a picture of Serge Gainsbourg and Alain Delon driving a 2CV past the Eiffel Tower in on the front, with Jean-Luc Godard cranking up the camera somewhere in the background.

You remember those couple of tracks on ‘Crystal Anis’ that featured that Gainbourg-style close-to-the-mic spoken word kinda thing, and the awesome chase scene instrumental ‘Belmondo’? Well that’s the style that prevails this time around, for better or for worse. It’s a lushly recorded business too, with sitar twangin’ away here and there, enough vintage organ to fund a second home in the country and lashing and lashing of that wonderful tremoloed fuzz guitar (praise the lord!). A really sensational recording in fact, if that’s your bag.

As if the band’s influences weren’t clear enough, they spend the entirety of ‘Votre Coté Yéyé M'emmerde’ listing them, managing to sound disconcertingly cool in the process (“et Morricone… l’écoute le fuzz!”). A more leftfield highlight is the English language ‘Cold Was The Ground’, a graveyard crawling gallic blues (not a cover of the similarly titled blues standard, though obviously seeking after similar territory), led by eerie Harry Lime-esque zither (yeah, I’m going to go with zither) and a fantastic, ice cold vocal from singer/drummer Marie. Then there’s the delightful ‘BB’, which unexpectedly backtracks into pure garage territory, sounding like the kind of charming teenage psyche-blunder that could easily have been pulled from some gallic Teenage Shutdown comp. Nice.

Those exceptions aside though, we’re deep into mod-ish crime movie OST territory here, basically, with the ghost of Serge stalking large. So if you like that sort of thing, DIG IN, but if you find it all a bit of a contrived vintage put-on, perhaps best steer clear. I mean, I get where you’re coming from with that I guess, but – sorry, what was that? Excuse me, I’m too busy digging in.

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Labels: best of 2013, The Liminanas