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Louis Philippe & The Night Mail - The Road To The Sea (Vinyl LP) PRE-ORDER
Louis Philippe & The Night Mail - The Road To The Sea (Vinyl LP) PRE-ORDER
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Louis Philippe and The Night Mail return with a new captivating record
where the songs are once again faultless. Carrying on the journey away
from the classic towards the unexpected with new synths and hand
claps adding a sense of the abrupt and, with voices calling from the
wings, a sense of play and a lack of fear.
Beyond the regular tales routinely retold, there's a secret, parallel
narrative of pop history. One written by the true enthusiasts and
eclectics, in which a perennial favourite like Pet Sounds didn't just
inspire endless claims of exceptionality but a long trail of harmonic
riches leading all the way to the 21st century. In this alternative
universe Philippe Auclair aka Louis Philippe, Anglo-French singer-
songwriter extraordinaire, has been an admired fixture for the past
four decades, from his beginnings as protagonist and house
producer at Mike Alway's fabled él Records label through his forays
into the Shibuya sound and collaborations with the likes of Bertrand
Burgalat, XTC's Dave Gregory, High Llamas' Sean O'Hagan and Young
Marble Giants' Stuart Moxham right up to his more recent adventures
with The Night Mail.
Who they, you say? A loose ensemble around bassist/sometime Acid
Jazz artist/encyclopedian of sound Andy Lewis, ex-Death in Vegas
guitarist/head of heads at Papernut Cambridge/legacy indie's favourite
live and session drummer Ian Button and guitarist/Viennese pop
ambassador to Canterbury Robert Rotifer, The Night Mail came together
a decade ago to make an album with underrated post-glam genius John
Howard. Following that one-off project they spent a couple of evenings
in London playing backing band for Robert Forster and Louis Philippe, in
the process forming an alliance with the latter that would bring about
their first collaborative album Thunderclouds in 2020. Faced with the
complexities of realising the rich sound of that record onstage, Philippe
brought on board his long-time associate, musical monster brain and
multi-instrumentalist Danny Manners.
So when Louis Philippe & The Night Mail met again at Rimshot Studio
in rural Kent in the spring of 2023 to tackle album number two, the same
extended line-up was assembled. Prior to these sessions, Philippe and
Lewis had got together to meticulously prepare arrangements for this
new batch of songs, already setting out a distinctly different stylistic
direction. If Thunderclouds had captured the sound of the band live in
the studio, work on The Road to the Sea began with just four days'
intense recording under Rimshot's oakwood eaves followed by
extensive extra sessions in Andy Lewis' hideaway studio somewhere
up in deepest Bassetlaw.
As the core duo of obsessives, Lewis/Philippe immersed themselves in
the material, adding voices, instruments and effects, interrupted only
once by Robert Rotifer visiting to throw in a few more touches of
Telecaster. Their mission was to fully realise the sonic and harmonic
potential of songs as varied as the partly portentous, partly (deceptively)
jaunty opener “The Road to Somewhere”, the catchy, XTC-flavoured
“Pictures of Anna”, the breezy-yet-apocalyptic space age groove of
“Where Did We Go Wrong” or the piano-led Francophone waltz of “Une
maison sans toit”. And by this point we've only made it halfway into side one.
As is Auclair/Philippe's incurable wont, there is plenty of doom lurking
underneath the music box sweetness of “Wine and Roses” or the cinematic
elegance of the almost-instrumental “Always” with fuzz and Morse code
interferences roughing up the sheen of its one word chorus and its liquid
coda gliding off into a Gainsbourgian sunset. A very different, much more
venomous kind of rayon vert is shining through in the vengeful “Watching
Your Sun Go Down”, featuring maybe the most rock chorus Louis Philippe
has ever written, in stark contrast to the gentlest of possible tributes that
is “Song for Paddy (Wings of Desire)”.At its heart, though, this is the work
of a seasoned songwriter with lots of life to look back on, be it the hazy
innocence of “notre première fois” in the wistful “Le baiser” or a grown
man's wine-addled walk home in the lonely hours of night (“A Friend”).
The maritime theme of the album title is both metaphorical (the love-torn
“All at Sea”) and sincerely literal. We find our hero reminiscing over
youthful days spent on the coast of Normandy, from the sun-soaked
memory land of “Those Days of Summer” awakening “ghosts of seasons
past”, via the undulating gentleness of a long drive “To The Sea” and all
the way back to Paris in the starkly ambient “Ville lumière”. There is a
sense of a circle closing, a sense of the glittering lights of the sparkling
capital reflected in a nocturnal Canal Saint-Martin mirroring those of a
Normandy seaside town in the English Channel.
It all adds up to a colourful mix of delicate textures, subtly sculpted
reverb, melodic mellotron madness, Wilsonesque layered vocal
harmonies, and the sort of long lost, very English whimsy it would
take an anglophile Frenchman to evoke. And yet, in its transparent
spaciousness dotted with charming detail, The Road To The Sea also
brings to mind the sound of Summer Dancing, Andy Lewis' acclaimed
2017 collaboration with the late, great Judy Dyble. Not without reason,
he is taking the production credit on this album that is a sort of
continuation, but by no means a repetition of its predecessor
Thunderclouds.
In many ways The Road to the Sea is the playfully psychedelic album
that Louis Philippe always had in him, but never got round to making.
He has now.
++++++++++++
Tracklisting
A1 The Road To Somewhere
A2 Pictures Of Anna
A3 Where Did We Go Wrong
A4 La Maison Sans Toit
A5 Those Days Of Summer
A6 All At Sea
A7 Le Baiser
B1 Wine And Roses
B2 Watching Your Sun Go Down
B3 A Friend
B4 Song For Paddy (Wings Of Desire)
B5 To The Sea
B6 Always
B7 Ville lumière
SKU:TR578LP
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