With their third album, Frànçois & The Atlas Mountains strike gold. In their previous record ‘E Volo Love’ there was a blissful contentment, with some strong rhythmic presence, but ‘Piano Ombre’ takes that feeling and runs with it. You would be hard pushed to hear a better single this spring than the wonderful ‘La vrit’, with its catchy repetitions that hark back a bit to Talking Heads but still sound irrefutably French. The record opens with an instrumental that looks back to late 1970s, but then the album really kicks into gear with ‘La vrit’ and ‘The Way To The Forest’, which opens up like a flower with its falsetto vocals and soaring guitar lines. Later on, ‘Summer Of A Heart’ has that distinctive shuffle we associate with the band, easy going and subtly uplifting, and there are some nice out of focus moments that recall the best of Metronomy. Yet the best thing about this album is that once you reach the end, you want to go straight back to the beginning and start it all over again. The sign of a good record for sure!
5 out of 5
Reviewed by Ben Hogwood
