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Compact disc with jewel case and clear tray.

Includes unlimited streaming of Houdini via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more. San Carol.

As suggested by the title, Houdini is an escape. And its creator, Maxime Dobosz, the leader of San Carol, is a master at breaking out. Before recording this panoramic album, he not only took the risk of leaving a position still seen by many (thanks to the contemporary world) as desirable (a permanent contract in a public administration), but he also left the city of Angers (Chabada, Ego Twster et XXXXX), and, above all, proved once more that he was incapable of getting bogged down despite the increasing success of his songs. San Carol's first album, La Main Invisible, in 2013, was a freakish DIY electro, whilst his 2015 Humain Trop Humain was a true rock masterpiece. The album was reminiscent of our provincial teenage years, when we dreamt too high and knew we would smash our heads on the ceiling. But San Carol is headstrong, and managed to open a breach through it. The air slips out into a huge sky, and the sound blossoms, enabling a host of unexpected influences that reinvent coolness with Houdini -, which was recorded back from touring in Texas. From Todd Rungren to Elton John, its listless lyricism flourishes on the fertile ground of deceptively simple rhythms -revealing, with drummer Simon Garnier, the fertile stress under the displayed casualness and the all-powerful groove. Always brilliantly assisted by the faithful Nerlov (VedeTT) on bass and joined on the machines by Raphaël d'Hervez (Pégase, Minitel Rose), Maxime Dobosz mostly handles guitars thanks to Stw, and makes them sound like synths. Yet again, San Carol stems from one of the multiple aspects of pop music and strives to invest its mutant potential and shake things up -while keeping an obsession for repetitive designs that are its vital source. If Maxime's new songs already feel like classics (as well as keeping the fluidity of ambient and motorik), they distort what is synthetic and inject novelty in its journey, similarly to the lyrics, which have become more personal, and discreetly political (a guy who was a binman, a cashier, a social security employee, a barman and a supervisor at a technical college has a few things to say about the neoliberal system), where joyous melancholy transcends the bitterness of frustrations. Houdini's sound, to conclude in Maxime's own words, is “the future of the past”.

Rémi Boiteux.

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