Musical skill – meaning the abilities one has as an instrumentalist, the way one masters complex scales or time signatures and can fire them out at impressive speed – is not necessarily something critics take into account when evaluating music. Quite the opposite: it is often dismissed as tasteless music-student stuff. That is why people find the Ramones cooler than prog-rock bands such as Yes, Keith Richards better than Eddie Van Halen, Jay-Z more exciting than some double-time show-offs.
That is why my first reaction to the Canadian math/experimental duo Angine de Poitrine was negative. »Good musicians write good songs; technical ability doesn’t matter,« I could already hear the sceptic in me thinking. And then I pressed play…
Their bluntly titled second album Vol. II is ultra-fun – also because one knows how it is performed live: by two jokers in funny papier-mâché costumes with oversized noses, who turn their microtonal bouncing riffs and fiddly eleven/7.5 rhythms, using a loop station and a double-neck guitar, into a mad mixture of klezmer, polka and prog rock. What is special about Angine de Poitrine, though, is that one can hear their, let’s say, goofiness even without the image.
The appeal ultimately comes from hearing how talented the two musicians are, and from rubbing up against the fact that they use that talent for such droll music. And: proper songs with catchy melodies really do sit at the core of the whole circus. You have to give credit where credit is due.
Vol. II
