The Parisians refine their bruised romanticism on a grand album of nocturnal and literary rock.
The record moves forward like a sleepless night: at once lucid and feverish, threaded with memories. Around the novelist-singer Jean-Pierre Montal (Leur Chamade, Les Leçons du Vertige), the Parisian band continues to deepen its velvet-inspired vein, weaving electric dandyism, sentimental songs, and urban digressions in the manner of Lou Reed exiled in Ivry-sur-Seine. Guitars that constantly resist the lure of prettiness, a saxophone that tarnishes the melodic line, and a voice that seems to sing from the bowels of an abandoned city, like Alain Kan vanished into the concrete maw of a last metro. Here, the style is inspired; modern exhaustion becomes elegant visions.
With L’Exil loin des slows, Les Mercuriales deliver a second album that is more melodic, more embodied, while not losing the strange charm of Choses m’échappent (2024): the way they fuse literature, rock, noir romanticism and urban spleen into a single motion. La Face Nord immediately sets the scene: sharp guitars, steady drums, a post-breakup lyric sung without pathos. L’Autre nuit pushes this restrained tension even further, in a slow hypnotic drift where each instrument seems to play a touch back. Further on, Les Stars du muet (with Ellah A. Thaun) explores a rock that accepts flaws, excesses, and breaths. As for Mode d’emploi du monde, shared with Jil Caplan, it resembles one last intimate inventory before liquidation.
Escaping the Trap of References
Yes, one sometimes thinks of Présence humaine (2000) by Michel Houellebecq with Bertrand Burgalat, Bashung, Rodolphe Burger, or Dashiell Hedayat. On paper, the equation could tip into a mere stylistic exercise. Yet Les Mercuriales evade the trap of references because they perform their tracks as lived scenes: moving, jagged, fragile. For them, looking in the rearview mirror is a way to stay upright amid the contemporary din.
We had already spoken highly of their first album, and L’Exil loin des slows does far more than confirm the initial intuition. The Mercuriales have found their place: that of a band capable of letting French literature, adventurous rock, and modern melancholy converse. When the record ends, it leaves that rare feeling: having crossed the night without fully getting out of it.
L’Exil loin des slows (Le Pop Club Records/Modulor). Release on May 29.
