wonder what the hell’s so amusing off-camera

Here at GPHQ we get a… sub­stan­tial quan­tity of unso­licited musical sub­mis­sions. Some are from labels and PR agen­cies, some are from artists who are going it alone, some are from friends of bands street­teaming the shit out of their best bros’ work. All of it is wel­come, but let’s face it… lots of it is shit. I mean, given how many bands there are trying to make it big these days, the high shit-to-shine ratio shouldn’t be too surprising.

That said, occa­sion­ally we get sent some really cool shit.

Just today I was made aware of the exis­tence of The Berg Sans Nipple, a bizarrely-monikered multi­na­tional duo (I’ll have to inter­view them just to get to the bottom of that one) com­posed of a Frenchman and a dirt farmer from Nebraska. They’re both drum­mers by nature, and the per­cus­sionist instinct shines through on the two sample tracks I was given and encour­aged to post about (hint to bands: some­times this works, so don’t stop).

“Along the Quai,” which is coin­ci­den­tally also the title of their forth­coming “first proper North Amer­ican” LP, reminds me at first blush of the Arcade Fire (oh, damning com­par­ison), but when the muf­fled vocals and synthy horns kick in the song reveals itself as a some­what dif­ferent sort of Franco-friendly post-pop. The drums are way up front in the mix, hov­ering over the horns and keys and horns that are keys and the increas­ingly post­processed lyrics. It fades out on a wave of elec­tronic bleep­bloopery, but this is the sort of muted, semi-organic pop music that I wouldn’t put past the Notwist and their ilk.

The other sample cut is “Mystic Song,” which I actu­ally think is the stronger of the two. Again, it cuts pretty close to the work of artists like Lali Puna and Ms John Soda (yes, these are all effec­tively the same band–just google “lali puna ms john soda notwist” and see for your­self) but it’s got a cer­tain unde­fin­able edge that sep­a­rates it. It also reminds me a bit of last year’s early-year curiosity Elec­tric Pres­i­dent, but with a tol­er­able (even good) singer and a con­sid­er­able remove from that band’s doe-eyed, tearstreaked cheeks ten­den­cies. If you know what I mean. (These guys are much better is what I mean.) The steel drum accents here are pretty cool, I think.

Along the Quai comes out here in the US tomorrow, 1÷23÷07 on Team Love (holy shit, that’s the same as Saddle Creek? cred sui­cide!), so if you like these tunes you can stream the whole album here and then maybe you should lay your hands on a phys­ical copy. [buy]