Fievel is Glauque Make Joy Delightfully Anachronistic on Rong Weicknes

The former song opens the record with a blast of synths which quickly give way to quieter melodies played on analog instruments, setting up the conceit of the song as if to prepare you for the way it will continue to wobble between each mode. Yet, for just how dense the instrumentation is, each destabilizing move feels like a stepping stone to build momentum; in that given song, it crescendos in a flurry of cymbals crashing and bows striking stringed instruments—as if to show that even sheer chaos has directionality baked in. By the time “As Above, So Below” kicks into full gear—turning up the playfulness without eschewing the complexity—it sounds like a room flooded with natural light, presenting an open space for Clément to spout existential concerns as the song builds up to an unexpected, crackling guitar solo: “Think about it / We’re all barely real, our ideas / Are only magical.”

Though the arrangements usually succeed at focusing your attention despite all of the elements jam-packed into any given second of the tracklist, Clément’s specific vocal quality is worth lauding, serving as the project’s grounding force. A point of comparison that comes to mind is Broadcast’s Trish Keenan—a straight-forward alto tinged with sweetness even when it floats above a daring collision of sound made by the rest of the band. Again, the arrangements and melodies are brilliantly executed, but Clément’s voice is a crucial instrument in the mix, tethering the fantastical swirl to solid ground.

With that guiding element, it allows the listener to revisit and pick out different nuances. The title track sounds like an uptempo jazz standard dipped in neon, backed by a barrage of keys, saxophone and bass that seem poised to prevent it from entering showtunes territory. Yet, by the end, it’s hard to identify what instruments are making a given sound—until the sax rips into a solo and the familiarity of a more conventional jazz workout returns. It’s as if subversion is deployed and suspended with the flip of a switch and it’s up to the more observant listener to unspool that thread, if they so wish.

In a similar vein, take “It’s So Easy,” which has the bones of a bossa nova song but is supplemented with warbling woodwinds as Clément insists that it’s “hard to seek what is unknown / It makes me kind of queasy.” In what is perhaps an effort to reflect the soul-searching lyrical content, these songs intrinsically rely on a constant state of motion—kinetic to the point of dizziness, as they throw you between time signatures, between realms of genre. A collective of musicians teeters on the edge of collapse, but the push and pull drive the end product. The sweetness of a track like “My Ouibette” can morph into something more sinister as it progresses, letting one piece slip before the double-time chorus explodes and noises erupt like they’re stabbing at you. Even if they’re building with familiar materials, it’s the way they’re torn apart and reconstructed that makes it feel like Fievel is Glauque is uninterested in recreating the past. Instead, on Rong Weicknes, they’ve made something with a pulse, contemporary and alive.

Even as the recording has become less lo-fi and embraced a lushness not present on prior releases, the crackle of the chemistry they’d landed on with their earlier release has not diminished. A different experimental artist of a different time and place called Fievel is Glauque’s rest state “a state of emergency, that’s where I want to be.” In a precarious world, we take comfort in that which staggers as we do. Anarchy can sing, and the result arrives light as air.

Elise Soutar is a New York-born-and-based music and culture writer.