My Review
Rover - Rover
The clock of sadness has hands that are always moving, because they go on even when we would like them to be in a state of paralysis. But time has decided for them, as for itself.
When despair, bitterness, restlessness and a sense of bewilderment come together and go to it, then everything is inevitable: we will have to reflect with a heavy head and in a constant daze.
Timothée Régnier is a French soul, with somatic traits conspicuously connected to his music, an intoxicating but often indigestible demijohn of wine, especially for those who prefer water that makes everything flow quickly.
Without commitment.
Today I am talking about his debut album, a bender that dulls superficial people, with no possibility of feeling any escape.
It is a striptease of roses falling naked to the ground, having already seen the tears dry up. He has shown so much of himself undressing that one can feel him trembling before those who avoid him, because facing the torments of an individual is always an exercise one prefers to avoid.
Yet there are textures that know softness, I would even say lightness, between the folds of an album that, while living among notes as a nebula in the process of crashing, is able to show its wake, where the colours have meaning, as an extreme and necessary opposition.
To listen to this work is to walk the path in the half-light that will never have mass sharing impulses, because where there is turbulence one always takes the closest road. The fear of the mind also defeats the contradictions of the heart.
Timothée is a champion without sabres, without excessive armaments, without the attitude of attack. He looks resigned but he is not.
It is a universe with its own oxygen, with a taste of death, which enchants with its authenticity. That's a good start.
And if you have thoughts waiting to be triggered, rest assured that the almost pop-like black knight will be able to make them jump up, without the bulletproof vest, because he defies doors since he knows he can slam them.
An album that is destined for eternity, I was talking about time and hour-hands, remember?
Listening to it, one realises how the musical genres that are sketched out are predisposed to agglomerate in the translucent space of bewilderment, like a pagan festival in the parvis of a burning church.
To listen to the 12 hour-hands is to sit on what is moving, with a feeling of uncomfortableness but also of an inexplicable effervescence that is so elegant, certainly out of this current time, so heedless of those who are slow and interested in introspection.
OK, now we start to visit the seconds on this watch, which seems more an hourglass if you look closely...
Song by song
Aqualast
The first hour-hand has the guitar strings tuned to Radiohead's D Major, while the voice, like a colt without direction or masters, takes a ride among a varied originality and almost hidden winks at cursed singers well covered by their collars. Traces of Beatles show the depth of non-erasable imprints. And it is a psychedelic attitude that comes through and envelops.
Remember
The second hour-hand is almost obese and rough: maybe it's the guitar, maybe it's the voice that sounds like a sheet of metal falling from the sky, in an incredibly soft flight.
The tons of sadness and bitterness slip away to hide, but they do not have time: you can clearly see them.
A refrain that you sing crying and then you run with this bass, along with voices of medieval virgins, so you can feel the weight of the pain...
Tonight
The third hour-hand, envious of the second one, is also running, with guitars like grenades that explode in a circular way, reminding us of Kiss with their most famous song.
But later everything becomes terribly serious, with keyboards freezing all enthusiasm and the words, which alone would be enough to swallow every nascent tear, ending up falling into the void. And the falsetto flies away.
Then we see Jeff Buckley, the sad and beautiful one.
Queen Of The Fools
With the fourth hour-hand we find the sound poetry of Neil Hannon and his Divine Comedy, for an almost psychedelic trip, certainly coloured by the French attitude to hide the admiration for the pop side of the Land of Albion.
The song darts, dances, with words of metal, wise, crude, like stone dripping oxygen now at the end of its strength. And all that remains is the painting of happy fools and their Queen...
Wedding Bells
Everything falls apart with the fifth hour-hand: Timothée removes the veil of bitterness and gives his nakedness the relief of collapse, starting with the heavy tone of his voice, which seeks the murky with its low register.
Like an old Pulp theatrical sound research, everything becomes a recitative that invades, steals and dies among emotions sitting above the spectral notes of a powerful piano and the guitar that with a few hints shatters us, while the bass allows itself that softness which at the end makes us sigh.
Lou
Take guitars, a bass, keyboards, drums and a voice like an excited yawn: you'll start to see the feathers of the sixth hour-hand.
Everything seems to be a sudden sunshine here: please don't be naive and superficial, there's a treatise of melancholy performing in these minutes with mastery and cunning, because only fools will be allowed to delude themselves.
We are in the 1960s, like a sudden dive, on the north coast of the United States, but in the belly of the song France claims its portion of consideration.
Silver
Hour-hand number 7.
The number of mystery knows swaggering waves of dusty guitars, coming from the south of the USA, with shoes full of dust given by the unstoppable path of the good Timothée who here grants the angels of time a little light.
But please push to the limit your ears: the slide guitar is a killer, it takes the French singer's heart and sends it down to hell with it...
Champagne
Rufus Wainwright makes a phone call: for the eighth hour-hand he wants to ride time and appears, Timothée spreads his arms in a full welcome and everything vibrates between the keyboards and the bass kissing happily, while the song takes us to Wales to have tea with Gorky's Zygotic Mynci...
Carry on
The power shows itself at the beginning of the ninth hour-hand: it lasts for a very short time, everything has to be anaesthetised, you have to get into the dress of a desperation that has little strength, with the rays of the sun that can't show themselves and everything goes back into the dress of a desperate story that colours this voice with a storm, which more than ever becomes dramatic and intrusive. The guitars sketch notes of advancing darkness and the turbulence of the simple keyboards make our listening a magnetic act.
Late Night Love
What you hear at the beginning sounds like hands, fast, with anxiety on the skin. They are the tenth.
Like a modern funeral march, everything becomes a long closing, the voice sounds like that of a Tom McRae with sadness down his vocal cords.
The whole is a wound, the music like a modern mourning, while trying to be a living spark, everything unknowingly dies instead.
Full Of Grace
Eleventh hour-hand: the guitar like a drunken step stuns us, then Timothée opens his mouth and everything becomes the synthesis of a folk-noir painted with a heavy rock without being metallic, a slow raid inside the needles of the voice, the atmosphere like that of a military plane with the handbrake in the sky, which is perplexed and worried.
In the black German forest the hiss of Coil with Swans negotiating the armistice of the world, while Wovenhand go out to escort.
When tragedy smells of beauty.
Father I Can't Explain
Time decides that the last hour- hand should be allowed the illusion of sweetness, having a dowry of three minutes and eight seconds of air, it will pass very quickly.
As if Lou Reed was looking for followers and David Bowie was hinting at consent, the song is a bluesy dance step, with clean buttons and a tie. But the throbbing heart has tremors and concessions.
In conclusion.
After listening to this album you find yourself reconsidering the journey of history, what music allows you to experience and what it denies you.
Yes, ii’s true, because that explains why this artist did not achieve success. But the latter is not needed, it does not increase the value in itself, certain albums are born to stand alone but it does not mean that they are devoid of meaning and oxygen.
Those who welcome the broad forms of art will find in these hour-hands one of the concrete ways to experience time.
Alex Dematteis
Musicshockworld
Salford
4th March 2022
https://open.spotify.com/album/65jtY7eQJAhmCrT9JG60RX?si=VKuJeLFMRSiE9hk7T17a9A
https://music.apple.com/gb/album/rover/501793644
