Douche Froide: s/t

Try Googling this mysterious French band and you will find  a homo erotic French art film.They are from Lille and have played shows with Belgrado and Bellicose Minds. They are very straight forward 80's new wave take on post- punk. There do find some interesting tones in the minimal way the sting things together , you won't be able to not have the comparison to Nena of 99 Luft Balloons fame.Finds the bounce of the "Passenger" with a dark under current flowing beneath the sunny voice of their singer.

"Qui Donc" is littered with traces of early Cure. The guitar at times gets more cutting, but is always offset by the sugar of their singer's light alto.Her voice is plaintive in delivery, but it is clear she has total control over it.It strangely seems to darken when they come to the pop chug of "Lame". There is a slight dissonance in the guitar and male vocals chime in around the chorus, which helps this song to stand out. Though by the fourth song they begin to sound a like though if I went back and listened to the earlier tracks I could hear this was not the case. I think this is because the very flat way this was recorded, gives everything a pretty uniform crispness, it's very black and white.While this is pop inflected post- punk, I would say it's sterile rather than dark."Les Bons Peres" has a similarly bass bass line as the previous song. The bass player takes a similar approach to most of the songs as well.

The opening guitar of "Foret" wants me to believe this is different from the other songs, but there are so many similar tonal elements, despite the cool guitar melody, that the uniformity takes over my ears. They need to abandon that pp chug they latched onto midway into the album and haven't seemed to be able to let got of ever since. The bass player goes up higher to show variance though they have obviously cut there teeth on lots of Boys Don't Cry ".  The change of pace to "Dissection is what the album desperately needed." It allows the singer to try other areas with her voice and gives her room to open and sing more.  "Stop" finds the band back to a more peppy pace that they seem to prefer. These guys would have been hug in the 80's , and if it wasn't for their insistence on staying at the hidden depths of the hipster underworld, they might catch momentum at the heel of a band like Savages.

They have come along way judging from their previous demo below, as the guitar sound is much more refined.Link to their web page via their label is below, basically only info in regard to purchasing their limited pressing of their demo and dates they are playing around France.The album has a good sound, I would just prefer it if they were a little darker and dynamic , but for the more punk thing they are going for I'll give it a 7.5  http://giveusachance.free.fr/douchefroide.htm