Acclaimed for their songwriting qualities on the release of the debut album Today, It’s A Wonderful Day (Grand Harmonium Records, UK), French band A Singer Must Die formed by Manuel Ferrer have reemerged as a unit of 6 new musicians.
Manuel Ferrer (vocals, choirs)
Manuel Bichon (guitars/choirs/bass)
Romy Marx (guitars)
Olivier Bucquet (bass/choirs/keys/saxophone)
Emilie Buttazzoni (vibraphone/keys)
Régis Martel (drums)
This album of chamber pop - dream-pop on the edges of the psychedelic - engages like a luminous loving road-movie made of strong contrasts. An imaginary film that mixes several references carried by Manuel Ferrer’s vocals (lyrics) and born of his complicity with composer Manuel Bichon, also the arranger who conducted most of the arrangements of the record. There is raw emotion at every turn on these harmonious unpredictable roads where all kinds of orchestral instrumentation collide: delicate bells, atmospheric guitars, aerial choirs, silky strings, piano, crystal-clear texture of vibraphones and other French horns. Their music is a mindful tribute to existential westerns (the reverberant mountains in Smoky Mourners), a playful and generous French horn in Still Worlds which could call to mind the sweetness and magical enchantment of a romantic Nino Rota, by way of cold-wave echoes reminiscent of a Berlin soundtrack by Wim Wenders in By The Dawn of Monday. It takes us to the final sequence of the song, supported by booming-like parade drums, building towards a dramatic, chaotic and oppressive intensity.
This hybrid form creates a setting made of songs that are definite singles: the blinged-out and ironic Black Limo, the strange atmosphere of a frightened surf piece of work Fell Foot Wood with its harsh guitars, or the foggy and catchy Brit-pop sounding The Sordid Tango.
Other drier landscapes contain feelings both intimate and expressive, at the frontiers of the theatrical that gives the listener contrasted feelings: from the instrumental introduction, a twilight Opening Night throws us into a hazy world of silence, in which an intimate arpeggio is playing among panoramic views of lava flow. The beginning of the album spreads by fragments the further tones of the record.
This “music-movie”, is primarily psychological, and built around what could look like an hymn to Venus, to wild love and its hazards that never did run smooth. What is important is its fantasized route. It takes us to the last words of the record, in the form of regrets and guilty confession: « Forgive me if I was a coward as I was so detached, it wasn’t me». Their music is troubled by extreme feelings, in which the listener can notably bump into a circus freak gallery in The Sordid Tango, looking like a comedy of the human condition (“Any resemblance to freaks living is cruelly accidental”). A variation clearly inspired from the touching and deeply human Freaks by Tod Browning. Their songwriting is a masterclass of musical and lyrical distances: euphoric moments are tinged with a melancholic background, and the introspective or contemplative parts are overrun by hope.
A SINGER MUST DIE distinctive music is in contrast with bands that adhere to a strict musical genre: their approach to songwriting definitely takes them far away from the mainstream. Thoughtful, thought provoking. Music that sounds free and timeless.
Manuel Ferrer (vocals, choirs)
Manuel Bichon (guitars/choirs/bass)
Romy Marx (guitars)
Olivier Bucquet (bass/choirs/keys/saxophone)
Emilie Buttazzoni (vibraphone/keys)
Régis Martel (drums)
This album of chamber pop - dream-pop on the edges of the psychedelic - engages like a luminous loving road-movie made of strong contrasts. An imaginary film that mixes several references carried by Manuel Ferrer’s vocals (lyrics) and born of his complicity with composer Manuel Bichon, also the arranger who conducted most of the arrangements of the record. There is raw emotion at every turn on these harmonious unpredictable roads where all kinds of orchestral instrumentation collide: delicate bells, atmospheric guitars, aerial choirs, silky strings, piano, crystal-clear texture of vibraphones and other French horns. Their music is a mindful tribute to existential westerns (the reverberant mountains in Smoky Mourners), a playful and generous French horn in Still Worlds which could call to mind the sweetness and magical enchantment of a romantic Nino Rota, by way of cold-wave echoes reminiscent of a Berlin soundtrack by Wim Wenders in By The Dawn of Monday. It takes us to the final sequence of the song, supported by booming-like parade drums, building towards a dramatic, chaotic and oppressive intensity.
This hybrid form creates a setting made of songs that are definite singles: the blinged-out and ironic Black Limo, the strange atmosphere of a frightened surf piece of work Fell Foot Wood with its harsh guitars, or the foggy and catchy Brit-pop sounding The Sordid Tango.
Other drier landscapes contain feelings both intimate and expressive, at the frontiers of the theatrical that gives the listener contrasted feelings: from the instrumental introduction, a twilight Opening Night throws us into a hazy world of silence, in which an intimate arpeggio is playing among panoramic views of lava flow. The beginning of the album spreads by fragments the further tones of the record.
This “music-movie”, is primarily psychological, and built around what could look like an hymn to Venus, to wild love and its hazards that never did run smooth. What is important is its fantasized route. It takes us to the last words of the record, in the form of regrets and guilty confession: « Forgive me if I was a coward as I was so detached, it wasn’t me». Their music is troubled by extreme feelings, in which the listener can notably bump into a circus freak gallery in The Sordid Tango, looking like a comedy of the human condition (“Any resemblance to freaks living is cruelly accidental”). A variation clearly inspired from the touching and deeply human Freaks by Tod Browning. Their songwriting is a masterclass of musical and lyrical distances: euphoric moments are tinged with a melancholic background, and the introspective or contemplative parts are overrun by hope.
A SINGER MUST DIE distinctive music is in contrast with bands that adhere to a strict musical genre: their approach to songwriting definitely takes them far away from the mainstream. Thoughtful, thought provoking. Music that sounds free and timeless.
