“Monts et merveilles” – Le collage de France

“Monts et merveilles” – Le Collage de France

“Monts et merveilles” is an easy-going French-language head-bopper with an unhurried backbeat and a wistful undercurrent. While acoustic at its core, the song is enhanced by soft and knowing electric touches–a plucked guitar here, a chiming synthesizer chord there. The title is part of the French idiom promettre monts et merveilles, which literally means to promise mountains and marvels–in other words, to declare that you’re going to deliver something especially awesome to someone. If this is akin to the English expression about promising the moon, the phrase likely has a baked-in sense of disappointment about it: no one who promises the moon, after all, ever delivers the actual moon. In translation the song’s lyrics evade close explication, offering instead a general sense of resignation at the whims of the universe and the injustice of so-called civilized society. Front man and songwriter Rémi Nation tells me the song has to do with the failure of trickle-down economics as well as the more general failing of Western society in its relentless equation of success with wealth. Still, the more I listen to the music, the more I sense, maybe, an insouciant sort of fortitude in the overall vibe.

A highlight among the song’s charms is the sing-song-y chorus, which finds Nation backed by Marie Pierre singing in unison rather than harmony, an effect one doesn’t often hear, especially with a male-female combination. I also really like the guitar break (2:21 to 2:41), in particular the low-register solo that begins at 2:32. It’s from the “less is more” school to be sure, but the tone and character is precise and, in this day and age, quite refreshing.

Le collage de France is the latest musical project helmed by Nation, who delighted us here while leading the band Orouni, featured on Fingertips in January 2017. Le collage de France’s bio reveals love and politics and language, and the ambiguities inherent in all three intertwining arenas, as areas of focus for this intriguing endeavor. “Monts et marveilles” is a track from Le collage de France’s debut LP, Langage Ment (“Language lies”), which was released late last month. Check it out, and buy it in various formats, on Bandcamp.