Lunear Music 2026
Intrepid explorers of pop-prog panoramas bring their kaleidoscopic dreams down to earth for everyone to relate to.
There Is Always Next Time
It’s been a natural progression, the course this French ensemble chart after "From Above" signaled a new bend in the road they embarked upon with “Many Miles Away” back in 2018: the gradual emergence of undiluted sentiments in the band’s music felt like a whiff of freshness in the intellectual air many other art-rock aficionados projected. Two years later, the pieces which form “There Is Always Next Time” take that promise further down the line, if not exactly to an upper level, because there’s too much ground to cover. More so, while philosophical concepts ruled the game of the group’s previous works, personal touches began to appear to turn songs into proper stories, and not for nothing the platter’s titular number will wrap things up by the trio stating, “We start to reflect upon / Regrets and all we’ve left undone”; remorse with regard to what’s already created must feel better than obsessing over what could happen.
And that’s exactly the subject opener “Tom & Colin” deals with, describing a friendship forged and fallen apart, rather than relationship in the Hanks family, by first drenching the refrain of the aforementioned acoustic finale, rendered here as a cappella, in mesmeric echo and then giving it a solid tribal groove. The rhythms Seb Bournier’s drums and JP Benadjer’s bass lay down is nothing short of imaginative: they allow Paul J. No’s voice and ivories to paint, in wide strokes and fine detail, an impressive variety of moody vistas. That’s why the collective don’t shy away from unleashing the “Let It Be”-like mellifluous solemnity on the album’s second track and making “One Day” a paean to hope, JP’s six strings soaring to celestial heights where Paul’s chamber organ and piano reign supreme. But such spirituality will fly out the window once Seb’s beats run wild and “I’ll Remember This” bends the “Smoke On The Water” riff into post-punk-disco, before “Pool Balls” reaches for the late-’80s electric magnificence only to reduce tempo at the end and reveal the song’s internal serenade.
“Rain” latches onto it to unfold an astonishing ballad, one gaining a fresh momentum in the middle, yet “The Wilderness Within” goes for a guitar-driven, indie-prog worry to repel reveries in favor of real affairs, and staggering epic “Christmas Flowers” tells a tale rooted in true-to-life familial matters. That’s something many other art-rockers aren’t capable of, and does this with nigh-orchestral instrumental passages as emotion-provoking as the lyrics, and that’s how “There Is Always Next Time” is destined to triumph on all fronts.
*****
