Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
When the world is in crisis, it is quite impossible to hear the cry of a single figure. Yet as the darkness comes into every sanctuary possible, as it invades the very heart of what we have to offer, where people look upon you with suspicion for betraying the ghost of a smile and the demon of a heart-felt thanks in your soul, we must still surely see that the whisper of help from even an individual is to be taken as seriously as nation’s grief.
If the world is in crisis, then art, in whatever form it is generated, is one of the answers to aspire to, to seek the answer to the nation’s woes, or the individual’s whisper in the darkness. If in art we trust then being able to converse in a different language, and to show it with intensity, is paramount.
It is a crisis tackled head on by Christine And The Queens in their new album Chris, a crisis perhaps of the faith that comes with the devastating power of a debut release and the way the artist has to then consider what way they wish to go next; for Christine & The Queens the way is clear, crisis is just another word and in both the language of the French and the English come through with equal measure, matching stirring passion.
It is a new world that resides beyond your doorstep, and whilst many will try to pull you back to a place that is steeped in the negative vibe, the conglomeration of outdated and bankrupt ideals, the name we go by really no longer matters, what the listener finds in this album is duality, the complement of dualism, of understand, and embracing that we grow as a person, that we see beyond the initial thoughts of childhood and teenage angst, or else we flounder, we become stuck in a pattern of conformity.
In songs such as Girlfriend, The Walker, 5 Dollars, the excellent Damn (What A Woman Must Do), What’s-Her-Face and Make Some Sense, Christine And The Queens relish this new found experience with a steam of glory in their sails; the so called difficult second album a sense of shouting in defiance at the crisis many seem fit to imagine, and soothing those who truly are dealing with the watershed moment of emergency engulfing us all.
An album of noble intentions made clear, Chris is packed with triumph.
Ian D. Hall