aaamusic | On 16, Jan 2011

Hmm. You’d think that orchestra’s in pop music would be a match made in heaven. In some cases they are, if we look back to Phil Spector’s teenage symphonies of the 60’s, or, more recently, Muse’s brand of histrionic pomp-metal, but too often they sound like musical confidence tipping into arrogance of the highest order, some pretentious faux-muso believing that because he can string an E major and a C sharp minor chord together that somehow makes him a bastion of musical genius (Bellamy and Co, take note, we haven’t forgiven you for The Resistance…). And yet, it should go so right, taking the musical expression of the person on the street and making it sound epic in every sense of the word. Precisely like what’s happening on Excerpts. The second effort of Ensemble, other wise known as Toulouse born, Montreal based composer/musician Olivier Alary.

Joined by vocalist Darcy Conroy and composer Johannes Malfatti, Excerpts is, for all intents and purposes, the last word in what an orchestral pop record should sound like. It combines heart melting melodies, mind expanding sonic experimentation and, at some points, good old fashioned “A Day in the Life” style orchestral head-fuckery. In the best sense possible. Make no mistake this is a rare record in so many ways, there’s the fact that their really aren’t many Anglo-French classical-pop records being made (for shame…) but there also aren’t this many records that are this finely crafted at the present time. There isn’t a melody out of place, a pizzicato plucked violin string where it shouldn’t be, and the really astonishing fact is that this doesn’t sound clinical as a result, it sounds like it’s the work of a master craftsmen, not like a production line.

As artistic as this record sounds, it very rarely crosses the stream into straight-up “Artiness”, in the sense it never becomes exclusive. This record never forgets the value of a good tune, and for every time it indulges in a “Day in the Life” style freak-out, like on Mirages, the album has the likes of it’s classy, Mumford and Son’s resembling title track or  the stately Imprints to make up for it. I’d be willing to bet that nothing quite like this will be released this year, which makes this work of utter genius all the more precious. An astonishing work of art.

Author: Will Howard