Musique / Rock is not dead / Psyché rock

Idles / Wand GB/US

IDLES (GB)

Rock is not dead

Just when we thought 1970s Anglo-Saxon grit had been stifled once and for all, a bunch of tough guys from Bristol unearth their salutary riff-based rage.

It just goes to show: The stronghold of trip-hop also harbours rock bands. Indeed, these fellows don’t just sip cups of tea. Angry 30-year-olds, guitars stuck to their bellies with a pint in each paw, they’ve got the whole of England shouting with their boy-next-door act. By trampling the cliché of penniless punk rockers (they’re teachers and dentists), Joe Talbot’s band dishes out with thick humour a committed hiding that thunders out of grubby pubs. Nicely wedged between Sleaford Mods (with added distortion) and Gang of Four, their first album, “Brutalism” will ruffle the Queen Mum’s underskirts!

video mother

WAND (US)

Psych rock

After three brilliantly noisy albums, the Californians inject some tortuous pop into their recent “Plum”. When the West Coast licks its guitars…

Since 2013, instead of gobbling up UVs in a funnel, Wand spend their time cobbling rock tunes together in their Los Angeles garage. Prolific (four albums in four years), ingenious and adventurous, they know how to stroke their guitars to get them to scream on the side. Fuzz at the ready, Ty Segall’s friends have decided not to choose between canon powder and the fragrance of psychedelic rock. In their latest album “Plum”, Cory Hanson gives even more freedom to his elastic timbre, at times reminiscent of Thom Yorke’s. How to keep fooling around with ambitious pop with your fingers stuck in the plug!

video plum