Album Review: Minuit Machine - Infrarouge (2019)

I think it was probably one of those “free” The Blog That Celebrates Itself compilation album downloads that first introduced me to the music of Minuit Machine. A 2015 tribute album to The Smiths, where Minuit Machine - aka Amandine Stioui and Helene De Thoury - took on the unenviable and potentially quite thankless task of covering ‘How Soon Is Now?’, a track so beloved by particularly fussy fans of The Smiths, the duo was always flirting with fire.

But they somehow managed to pull it off with no little amount of credibility still intact; walls of Numan-esque synths combined with ice cold femme fatale-style vocals miraculously reinventing the feted tune, to leave it with distinctly haunted goth-rock aftertaste. It was, for me, the standout track on an otherwise uninspiring and ordinary tribute album.

That same niche but immensely satisfying formula is applied again on Infrarouge, Minuit Machine’s third studio album, released on the Synth Religion label earlier this year. Slow-burning rhythms push hard up against layers of dark foreboding synth, only to then bounce off, yet still complement, the duo's richly melodramatic vocals.

Infrarouge is something of a comeback album for the duo, a belated follow-up, after a brief hiatus, to 2014’s Live & Destroy and 2015’s Violent Rains. I’m not sure how Stioui spent the intervening years, but De Thoury has been working hard to carve out a successful “solo” career (as Hante.) within similar darkwave, synthwave, and goth-rock realms.

There’s drama aplenty in both the words and music found on Infrarouge; frequently claustrophobic yet still very grand and beautiful tunes that deal with the complexities of modern life and human relationships. With titles like ‘Chaos’, ‘Empty Shell’, ‘Fear of Missing Out’, ‘Sacrifice’, ‘Forgive Me For My Sins’, and one of the best, ‘Drgs’ … “we are doomed to stay alone, drugs, I need something to fill me up, I need something to kill the rage, drugs, the world is ending but I don’t care, we all die but I don’t care”… (whoa, steady on! - Shiny Happy Ed)

There’s also a much-improved fleshed-out remastered version of ‘I Am A Boy’, which first appeared on the duo’s debut EP of 2013, Blue Moon.

De Thoury wrote the music and produced the album, and I believe she’s responsible for most, if not all, of those delicious towering synths, while Stioui wrote the album’s lyrics and takes care of the vocals.

At ten tracks across 43-odd minutes, Infrarouge is a terrific album, something of a masterclass within its genre, by 2019 standards at least, and as comebacks go, this one is way better than anyone could have anticipated. 

One of my favourite albums of the year so far. 

Here's 'Forgive Me For My Sins' ...

Classic Album Review: The Smiths - Hatful of Hollow (1984)

I can’t believe that everythingsgonegreen has been coughing and spluttering its way around cyberspace for four full years now and to date there’s been no mention of The Smiths! That makes no sense at all … so here’s a little something I wrote some time ago for another site …

Such is the widespread influence and enduring legacy of The Smiths it is often difficult to believe that the band released just four studio albums over the course of its five-year existence. While each of those albums is quite special in its own unique way – none more so than The Queen Is Dead, which remains the band’s masterpiece – the sense of majesty and awe surrounding The Smiths is often at odds with the band’s otherwise relatively short-lived achievements. Well, on the surface at least.

Scratch beneath that surface however and you soon discover why The Smiths were (and are) held in such high regard. The sheer genius of Morrissey’s lyrics (for the most part), the often controversial and socially/politically challenging nature of those very songs, plus the brilliance of Johnny Marr’s music/guitar – just for starters – would prove an irresistible formula long after the band hit its own self-imposed use-by date in 1987.

And then of course there are all of those compilation albums … something that undoubtedly added gloss to not only the band’s discography, but it’s almost flawless reputation.

Excluding the Singles Box Set or rare Japanese imports and albums of that ilk, I can count at least nine compilation albums (* see below) issued under the band’s name, the first (and best) of which was the excellent Hatful of Hollow, released just weeks after the self-titled debut.

Hatful of Hollow is essentially a collection of early BBC sessions (from 1983 and 1984), a few non-album singles, and an assortment of b-sides. Basically it is a kind of hodge-podge mix of early recordings; a key selling point being the different versions of not only those singles, but also the associated b-sides. Many hardcore fans of the band consider a number of these versions to be superior to those found elsewhere.

Highlights: ‘What Difference Does It Make’, the seminal ‘How Soon Is Now’ (believe it or not, originally a b-side), ‘Hand in Glove’, ‘This Charming Man’, ‘Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now’, ‘William, It Was Really Nothing’, ‘Accept Yourself’, plus my own favourite, ‘Back To The Old House’ … and more!

* Nine compilation albums of The Smiths: Hatful of Hollow, The World Won’t Listen, Louder Than Bombs, Rank (the band’s only official live album), two volumes of The Best Of (1 & 2), Singles, The Very Best Of, and more recently, The Sound Of The Smiths … phew!