EP REVIEW: Qúetzal Snåkes – Lovely Sort of Death
Courtesy of Ilia Rogatchevski
★★★★
Qúetzal Snåkes crawl out shame-faced and delirious, pained and contorted, from shadows elongated by the teasing Marseilles sun. They are flying through the mud on their smarting bellies, like feathered serpents punished for tempting the innocent into a life of hedonistic truth-finding. These fearless reverb surfers catch the fading remnants of autumnal waves, as they crash at the feet of feral children, out on their evening prowl along the coast.
The ‘Lovely Sort of Death EP’ came out in late June of this year, as a collaborative production between Retard Records and Howlin’ Banana Records, two independent French labels. The eponymous opening track, unfurls with chortling riffs and sets the tone for the rest of the experimental player. This French five-piece do not steer far from the dark and moody model first pioneered by the Black Angels, almost ten years ago, but they’re piloting their own vehicle. Tense and weighty walls of sound conspire to commit evil deeds between your ears. The melodies are elusive. The atmosphere, gaseous.
Unlike their neo-psychedelic forefathers, however, Qúetzal Snåkes avoid politics. Instead, they favour a minimal approach to lyrical dressing. ‘Oh Lord of Deafstruction’ offers jaundiced clues, sparsely dotting a mystic ocean, like lifebuoys for the weak and hopeless. These guys entrust their audience to sink deep into bitter-sweet hallucinations, which bark and bite at optical nerve endings, seducing the listener into a milky sleep, soused in feedback sweat spurned on by ecstasy nightmares.
The bass line on ‘I Trip Through Love’, drives the song forward like a newly-stolen hotrod, with quaint little flames painted on the side. The dirty, filtered vocals are reminiscent of parallel treatments by other contemporaries, such as Cosmonauts, Night Beats and Christian Bland and the Revelators, but this band’s ability to write a catchy tune should not be overlooked. The closing track, ‘W. E. T.’, is a motorcycle ride through a winding, slippery mountain pass at dusk. It is full of meandering curves and dangerous blind spots. Although the open road is a harsh mistress, it feels as if the journey should go on forever. The song, lost on the highway, threatens to spin dangerously out of control and burst into flames like Peter Fonda’s hog at the end of Easy Rider. Unfortunately, the track fades out, but it seems that it is an ideal tune to close their live set with. Catch them, if you can, supporting the Wands at the Embobineuse Theatre De Fortune, Marseilles in late November.
It is very easy to keep rolling out the same dough, over and over until the pastiche becomes stale and boring. It is equally distressing to see kids pick up axes and attempt to make something which resembles psychedelic music. Psychedelic music has a long and rich history. It is conceptually loaded and very difficult to do well. There is more to this sub-genre of blues-based-eastern-inspired rock than just questions of sound. Luckily, scratching at the surface of the French underground is a burgeoning garage-psych scene, emblazoned with continental spirit, raw guts and wealthy talent, rearing to start a heavy opal revolution.
Qúetzal Snåkes may not be the avant-garde in this fair battle against mediocre art forms, but they are very good marksmen indeed. Better yet, they understand this and tackle the issue with wry humour, as is evident by the typographic anomaly in their name. Qúetzal Snåkes will only admit to creating ‘deafstruction’ – an attempt to subvert our complacent tendency to compartmentalize everything we do not quite understand – and you can subscribe to their ethereal contention by purchasing this six track EP for a mere €666 directly from their Bandcamp page. Go on, make them a little fortune.
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