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End-of-Year Scheduling Note

It’s a Monday, but I don’t have a review for you. I was absolutely slammed at work last week, but I should have a bit more breathing room now.

Considering how close we are to the end of the year, and considering how many records there are I haven’t reviewed but would love to touch on, I will be increasing the frequency of Odds & Ends posts between now and mid-December. I’m not sure how many I’ll wind up posting, but I’d expect at least 4 between now and the end of the year, as opposed to the expected two.

I’ll also be taking off the weeks of Dec. 21 and 28, to allow myself adequate time to finish my year-end best-of lists and to allow Kelci and Dan adequate time to proofread them. Those can be expected in early-to-mid January.

Album Review: PoiL – Sus

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Band: PoiL | Album: Sus | Genre: Progressive rock, Zeuhl, RIO | Year: 2019

From: Lyon, France | Label: Dur et Doux

For fans of: Magma, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Ni, Frank Zappa

Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon | Apple Music

I’ve written before of France’s unique place in the world of progressive rock. Of the countries with distinct national sounds, theirs has always been the most unashamedly weird, fusing progressive rock with jazz and avant-garde music. Zeuhl was an almost-exclusively-French genre for the first twenty or so years of its existence, and two of the five founders of the Rock in Opposition (RIO) scene were Francophone. (Univers Zero were from the French-speaking Wallonia region of Belgium.) PoiL, the experimental Lyonnais trio, are one of the most prominent contemporary bands carrying on this tradition.

Last year, PoiL fused with the band Ni to become three-sevenths of the supergroup PinioL. Ni’s particular brand of experimental rock music has frequently bordered on metal, and on Sus, it sounds as if some of that may have rubbed off on the guys in PoiL. PoiL lacks a guitar player, but that doesn’t stop the band from laying down their heaviest music to date. The bass on this album crunches and snarls; the electric piano pounds out weird, dissonant chords; and the drumming is downright virtuosic. Continue reading “Album Review: PoiL – Sus” →