about an album from Montreal-based indie pop duo Bibi Club

A blend of new wave and French pop to cool you off

Guitarist Nicolas Basque met singer/keyboardist Adèle Trottier-Rivard at a Plants and Animals recording session. They started dating and formed Bibi Club in 2019.

The duo debuted that year with an EP, followed up with a full-length in 2022, and, on May 10th, released a new album, "Feu de garde."

It opens with the downbeat "La Terre." Trottier-Rivard sings this in French, and her unfussy vocal counters Basque's wobbling, preoccupied guitars. The vocal melodies catch like a nursery rhyme. All the while, the bass stretches ahead like a sidewalk decorated in hopscotch squares of multicolored chalk.

The French pop-inspired Stereolab comes to mind. Bibi Club say they make living room party music. Up- or downtempo, it sounds great.

The cool grass of Trottier-Rivard's delivery pairs wonderfully with Basque's suggestive guitar sounds and rhythms. His guitar tone often echoes The Cure. Bibi Club knit songs with inspired, layered arrangements of easy melodies, and notes hang like ribbons in the breeze. Guitars, bass, and drums—each gives a focused performance.

On "Parc de Beauvoir," a pulse-quickened guitar rings out. The soft, seemingly superficial lyrics—"Did you see the flowers on the brick wall? Did you see how people dress? We walk around, we talk together"—belie the tension gradually building layer by layer.

"Le feu" is one of my favorites. The bass offers Trottier-Rivard space, and her breathy French does not even flinch when the rhythm section skips by. The guitar's beautiful summer tones chime over the snappy drums.

 

 

Songs like this, "L'île aux bleuets," and "Rue du Repos" sound like a nice little string of luck.

The French pop "Rue du Repos" streams up-tempo rhythms and jangly jazz-inflected chords tinted in echo and reverb. The solid bass shifts its weight with ease to Trottier-Rivard's mellow vocal. The song is a sparrow's dust bath.

"Feu de garde" is available on Secret City Records.

something for blue borg's summer

The color blue blended in paintings is brushed across a psychopathic person in quantum space physically. A color palette for operations involves less thinking. The gas mask will breath blue soldiers inside out and send the officers into a digital math death. Blue to flatten bullets and implode missiles. Threats always outward. Rare earth minerals alienate in personal radiation. Blue wants to meet and be associated with others. Four centuries ago a crater was formed and blue stored things in it. This is a calculation. A phone. A gun. Those are both there. A digital blue passively hating object programmed only to consume. A blue fossil hates better than a time-sensitive organism that pretends to still be alive.

something about David Sedaris’s "Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk"

Animals play all the parts in David Sedaris’s Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, published in 2010. The characters are skillfully anthropomorphized and often find themselves jammed up in ways most humans can recognize.

 

But these animals are not just substitutes for people. They are nameless as strays and stock, and the reader rarely forgets these characters face animal fates—the farmer’s axe, the researcher’s hypodermic needle, the law of the jungle.

 

I have read several Sedaris collections and had decided I much preferred his autobiographical pieces, so I was surprised at how much I liked these sixteen shorts of humor and heart worms—and the accompanying animal illustrations by Ian Falconer.

 

I enjoyed a 2010 Little, Brown, and Company hardcover copy with patient, spacious type and thick-stock pages.

 

regrets about sound quality in 2024

Getting great picture quality is easy and affordable in 2024, but how does one get great audio?

 

Audio—music, especially—should always sound live, as if the musicians are playing right there in front of you on good equipment. But most TVs and computers have tinny little built-in speakers that face backwards. And people stream music now—shitty, compressed audio through Spotify or whatever.

 

People used to have big stereos in their homes, 12-inch woofers paired with clear tweeters. Now we have sound bars, which are okay, but still limited in comparison.

Note: CDs were good. Tapes sucked because of the hiss. People fetishize vinyl now, but I the audio quality is worse than CDs.