It's been a quite while since 2012's critically acclaimed album The Echo Show. In that time, Parisian psych duo Yeti Lane have been backing band for Can legend Damo Suzuki, played with the fractured genius behind Brian Jonestown Massacre, Anton Newcombe, and managed to forge a new sound for themselves. It's a sound that is darker, stronger, weirder and much, much larger.
In a sea of new psych sounds, it's increasingly difficult to go diving and come up with pearls. The key, as Charlie Boyer and Cédric Benyoucef have discovered, is to go deeper. Much, much deeper. Through a series of seemingly spontaneous recording sessions, the duo have managed to create a noise that, at times, channels the modal power surges of Swedish psychedelic pioneers Baby Grandmothers, and at others, is anchored in the same dock as the heavy melodic lunge of Dead Meadow.
That's not to say that they sound the same as either, rather that their reference points are wider than Pete Kember's tremelo and a farsifa organ. The album's title, which translated from the French means 'the dawn', is perfect – this band's star is rising once again.
Opener "Delicat" boasts guitars that sound like a heat haze, all harsh, shimmering glare – think Forest Swords, but with decent weather. Follow up "Good Word's Gone" provides the first indication of something heavier – there are even shades of early Verve… you remember: the one before the capitulation to classic rock turned everything to shit.
"Liquide" and "Crystal Sky" show off the talents of a band learning how to wear its sound, shrugging the shoulders for a more comfortable fit and standing back in a self-referential glow. However, it is on "Acide Amer" and the title track, "L'Aurore", that Yeti Lane really put distance between themselves and their peers. The latter, in particular, with its head-nodding, lolloping beat, has one foot on the stage and the other on a chugging, grown-up dancefloor. Easy on the knees and heavy on the mind.
In many ways, L'Aurore sounds like the album I was expecting from Kevin Parker's Tame Impala. Yet where Currents was dragged down and drowned in self-indulgence, L'Aurore is buoyed by ideas, conviction and wonderful tunes.
