Ryan's Malajube Review

Part of me feels a little uncomfortable with reviewing Malajube's Labyrinthes, and, I'm sad to admit, it's for the exact reason one might expect it to be: the album's in French, and my French ability is, at best, somewhat limited. Now, obviously, we live in a bilingual country, and there's no reason that I should expect that all of the Polaris nominees be in the language that I speak. If anything, it's a little surprising that there's only one album in French out of the ten that received the nominations (but the reasons connected to that might be beyond the scope of a review like this).

So, anyways, on to Labyrinthes. It's a fairly complex album, one that brings in a lot of different influences (everything from 60s French pop to 80s synth music to late 90s/new millennium rock), but it does so in a way that all really comes together nicely, and really feels like Malajube is a band that loves nothing more than justs getting together and jamming out until they get a song. Not all bands feel like that, and it's a very organic, holistic sort of texture that gets brought out in all of the instrumentation.

Lyrically, as I said, it was hard for me to get a feel for it, as I only have a grade nine level of French. This was kind of hard for me, because I'm usually a bit of a lyrics nut, and it's often the lyrics that determine for me whether or not I'm going to enjoy a song. That being said, despite the barrier, I still got a good feeling for the emotional content of the songs - lead singer Julien Mineau really does a good job of emoting (a skill that usually has a negative connotation, because it's often overdone, but here it's done just right).

It's been said that a defining quality of real art is that it has the power to affect change within its audience; that you're either not the same after having appreciated it, or at the very least it creates the desire within you to be different. It sounds cheesy to say it, but this album makes me wish I had a better understanding of French, so that I could better understand the art that our entire country creates. I think that says something about it.