Formed in Bristol in 2011 - the band have shared the stage with the likes of Future of the left, Refused, The Bronx, Retox, IDLES, Trash Talk, Jamie Lenman, Fucked Up and played at festivals across the country like Truck, Dot To Dot, ArcTanGent, Y Not and many more. They will have an album launch show on June 21st.....they will also be at this years 2000trees Festival in July with more shows, festivals and live dates TBA in the coming weeks and months.
The bands name comes from the fact St Pierre is a town where everything that could go wrong did, and with this album that sentiment was certainly present throughout. Recorded at Rockfield studios in January 2017 by Sean Genockey (Reuben/Shame/The Who/Jamie Lenman), the creation of 'Caprice Enchanté' itself proved incredibly difficult and required at least 4 - 5 additional sessions at Black dog studios in London over the course of 6- 8 months. They had to work with a producer in demand and his ever increasingly busy diary (from band vocalist Damien Sayell - "Sean was commissioned to record the new Shame album, shortly after that the new Roger Daltrey album and then again soon after the new album by The Who, which meant further delays in being able to finish the album"), damaged vocal chords ("On the 1st day of vocal recording I blew my voice on the 1st song of a three day session"), disagreements over final mixes ("the mixing of the album proved to be difficult as well and took months and months of us nit-picking to finally get to the point where we were happy.") and an original member leaving the band ("bassist Dave Larkin left the band shortly after completion of the album two years from beginning the process.").
The ambitions are incredibly high on 'Caprice Enchante' though, despite the delays and difficulties in its creation, as Damien explains - "The album was written over the course of 2-3 years and began with the intention of being a critique of my romanticisation of music, and how felt to be an ageing musician who hadn’t achieved the bedroom aspirations of my teenage years. As the writing progressed the theme gradually became more about ego, self-entitlement, defeatism and identity, or more so a sense of a losing your identity."
The album title came from the sing, with Caprice (‘a sudden and unaccountable change of mood or behaviour’) and Enchanté (’nice to meet you)’.As Damien continues - "It was the 1st song written for the album and set the tone for what followed. It captured the sense of becoming accustomed to the experience of loving something intently one day and then hating it fully the next, be that music, myself or my identity. This was the point I realised that my romanticism didn’t start and end with music but, was intrinsic to how I identified as a musician, a husband, a brother, and a son. The perceived importance of this and the sense of loss I had as I realised that they were only important to me and didn’t warrant any awe or admiration from anyone else, led me to draw comparisons between my own unsavoury characteristics and the current political climate. Brexit, Trump, national pride, identity politics - the sense of losing an identity to an exterior body, UK/EU, immigration or in my case as a musician, losing your identity to age, lack of success or other people’s success. I realised that 14 year old me had romanticised a future which would most likely never exist and that now at 31-32 I was romanticising the past as a way of dealing with how I foresaw my future."
With songs about ego and the battle of the self-principle (The Safety Word is Oklahoma), right-wing politics and its rhetoric of deception (Braindead) to conflating the success of others as their own failure (Omens). Depression and masculinity (Things to do in Denbigh When you’re dead) to a loss of identity through aggressive gentrification (Pierre Brassau), the scope and scale of this album is both huge and personal. It is an album of admissions and an album of understanding through confusion. Confusion at other people and their decisions, their motivations and beliefs, the world as it currently is and confusion of the self and of the mind. Musically it is heavy and raw, gritty and funny, warm and angry, and is an album to fully get lost in as well as get behind whilst it leads the charge for change, even if it perhaps never fully believe in itself enough for that change to happen. Also, you are going to absolutely love it.
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