A dash of punk, plenty of electro and pop: with “Protocol,” the Corsican band delivers bright post-party horizons for the French touch.
A song, on Casablanca Drivers’ new album, is called Feeling Good. Coincidentally: like The Rapture, Kirin J. Callinan, with whom they collaborated in 2025, or formerly the Belgians of Great Mountain Fire, the Corsican trio casually tackles malaise, boredom. There is no room here for melancholy, half-measures, or vague longing, even when the vocals grow more haunting (Fears), even when the synth pads simulate moments of respite (Lazy).
Thus, a lot happens in these supercharged pop songs, unfiltered and unrestrained, able to fuse in a matter of minutes the excessive with the intimate, the absurd with the exaltation.
The sense of the party
One year after Tabloid (2025), more conceptual, probably less immediate and still released by the Mexican arm of the Canadian label Arts & Crafts, Casablanca Drivers now favor immediacy, lightness, this concentrate of saturated guitars, brute-energy verses and ecstatic choruses that encourage putting aside the worries of daily life. The wildest thing is that this grand blend, sometimes a tad chaotic, seems perfectly clear, personal, coherent. It is impossible, in that regard, not to mention the quality of the production and mixing, handled respectively by Corentin “Nit” Kerdraon (Sébastien Tellier, Cola Boyy) and Ash Workman (Metronomy, Baxter Dury, Malik Djoudi), all with the evident aim of sharpening every contrast, boosting each idea, and passionately embracing the imagination of the party – here guaranteed to be hangover-free.
The big mix
If it seems inconceivable to ignore the album’s visual identity, imagined by Alex Courtès (Daft Punk, Phoenix, Cassius), it is in the music’s physicality that the victory lies. Cube, X-Ray, Easy or Garage and Plastic: as many tracks with bouncing bass lines and high BPM, that please the sheer joy of stomping your feet or launching into unruly choreographies.
Ultimately, one does not know whether one is listening to a pop album nurtured by the French touch, a modernized yet still sharp take on 1980s dance music, or, astonished, witnessing a meeting between Does It Offend You, Yeah? and the Happy Mondays, and that’s precisely a good thing. It is in this confusion, in this grand outpouring of contagious melodies and jagged beats, that Protocol finds its full measure, and, in its own way, defines a particular idea of feel‑good music.
Protocol (Arts & Crafts México/Mattan Records). Release on April 24.
Live at Bus Palladium, Paris, on May 6.
