Jack And The Bearded Fishermen is back with its fourth album.
Since 2005, the band now composed of Boris Campello (drums), Thomas Paris (bass), Peete (guitar), Bastien Hennaut (guitar/vocals) and Hervé Bailly (guitar/vocals) cultivates distorsion. Playful Winds comes out in 2022.
The album begins with Beware of Birds, a dissonant and very hooking composition which takes advantage of the three guitars to create a weighing and noisy ambience, moving forward through haunting tones before the sound suddenly ceases, leaving for Fingers Crossed, a more soaring composition. Distant vocals with Industrial influences add some blackness to the groove of this hooking Post-Metal, which continues with the slowness of From Above, a way more cold and weighing track, but vocals come to add some human touch to this ice-cold music. We feel some catchy tones create a contrast with the sound, then Atlantide adds an aggressive technicality to the atmosphere. The song’s intensity will be strengthened by the break, then Periscope offers a faraway and soft break which keeps dark sonorities before aggressiveness surfaces again on Lips As Martyr. The song’s Post-Punk influences give it a majestic dimension which is really effective, feeding the heady coldness, then Season offers a very weighing introduction to develop heavy and unhealthy sonorities in which soaring vocals create an interesting contrast, then Playful Winds offers us a redeeming moment of respite. The break is short, and it drives us to Silent Films and its hooking energy, developing warlike, burdening and above all abrasive tones to spit shrilling harmonics over us. The contrast with the jerky rhythmic is effective, just like on Circles and Dots and its increasing intensity, which closes the album with a haunting saturation as well as hypnotic leads to drive us to the final.
To be honest, Playful Winds is my first contact with Jack And The Bearded Fishermen. And it’s definitely a positive one. Whether the slow and hooking sound will not please everyone, the band’s multiple influences are perfectly exploited.
90/100