“Sometimes I leave/There I think hard/I meditate,” sings Population II drummer Pierre-Luc Gratton in Beau baptism. No need to force yourself, however, to be carried away by the psychedelic-astral meditations of the trio’s second album, Électrons Libres du Québec.
With À la Ô Terre, its predecessor, Population II revealed an explosive music where the shaggy passion of garage rock fueled the means and ambitions of free jazz, although without always succeeding in translating the bewitchment caused by the formation into a spectacle, from moments of trance during which it is good to drown in noise.
In short: Population II was already the best rock band on stage in Montreal, but was not yet on record. Which is now done.
Back with Emmanuel Éthier directing, Population II draws on space rock (C’tau boutte), psych rock and stoner rock, hardcore (To Kébec), dirty funk and free jazz. So much so that at times, it’s as if the sinister rascals of Black Sabbath from the Master of Reality period (Orlando) had entered the studio under the leadership of the prime minister of groove George Clinton or the interstellar jazzman Sun Ra, with Jimmy Hunt on the lyrics bantering and cryptic.
While Sébastien Provençal’s bass often becomes the locomotive of these stays on the planet of hypnosis, the drums work with finesse, Gratton being more of a colorist than a nag. Tristan Lacombe undoubtedly remains the hero of this outfit and spits constellations of distortions from his guitar, his swift playing never losing sight of the fact that it is better to bewitch than to throw away.
“At midnight, late at night, everything seems eternal,” murmurs Pierre-Luc in Rapaillé, and the same goes for the intoxicating effect produced by his group which, when it opens the hatches of its amps to better go on spin, manages to obliterate all reality in the sovereign eternity of fuzz.
As the other said: long live free Quebec rock!
