Piscine Fránçois & the Atlas Mountains E Volo Love (Domino Record) 2011 Listen

Their last album, released in 2009, was called Plaine Inondable (“floodable plain”). A symbolic title because if one element predominates in the art of Fránçois & The Atlas Mountains, it has to be water. In this new collection, E Volo Love (a palindrome meaning "and love flies"), Fránçois Marry’s bewitching brew of pop-folk blithely flows in and out of French and English, surfing on moist, iridescent surfaces slick with oil. The French leader of the group currently lives in Bristol and works as a draftsman as well as a creator of watercolour musical compositions.

© dr Fránçois and The Atlas Mountains on MySpace

The edges are toned down, sketched out with impressionist touches, so that the colours overlap and blend to create the right hue. This world of light and shadows is like a cloudy, nebulous landscape.

Land is never far from our feet, though, not just in the rocky name of the Atlas Mountains, but in the deep roll of the percussion, the rough guitar work and the sharp edge of the solos. Against a backdrop of lethargy and blissful calm a bubbling energy wells up like a gentle fire. It would be difficult not to be captivated by this original and beautifully arranged sound that at times leaves a chink through which we get a glimpse at chaos and liberty; skills that undoubtedly earned the foursome distinctions at the Printemps de Bourges and the Francofolies de la Rochelle in 2010 and 2011 respectively, before they went on to become the first French group to sign up with the prestigious Domino label (Arctic Monkeys, Anna Calvi, The Kills, etc.). Give in to weightlessness and slip into the clouds that skit from one track to another; imagine yourself transported, the breeze brushing against your cheeks.

Fránçois & The Atlas Mountains E Volo Love (Domino) 2011
On tour in France and Europe

Translation by Anne-Marie Harper