I run the risk of sparking some lively debate by saying this, but France — while being a beautiful country — isn’t known as Europe's center of rock 'n' roll. Sure, there are some French bands that like to rock out but in comparison to the music coming out of, say, Sweden, Germany, or the UK, France still seems to lag quite a bit behind.
So when a CD lands on my French doormat from anywhere in my adopted homeland, I excitedly rush to play it in the hope that it can help disprove that assessment and put all such sweeping observations to bed once and for all.
This happened recently when The Elderberries album arrived. Its very title, Ignorance & Bliss, seemed, in part, to be aimed at me — or to anyone daft enough to casually sweep aside French bands.
Ignorance & Bliss is the band's second album, the follow-up to their just-as-appropriately titled debut, Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained. Looking a little deeper I discover that the band is actually a mix of Canadian, English, and French musicians. However, they call France home and they've crisscrossed it many times on tour.
Their reputation is such that they secured a deal with the producers of Hellphone, a rock 'n' roll film, to compose the soundtrack. There is a powerfully raw quality to the band's style. It is easy to imagine them being brought up in houses that had classic seventies rock piped throughout every room.
Ignorance & Bliss was mixed by Steve Orchard, whose pedigree has seen him work with the likes of U2, Coldplay, and Travis — not quite hard rock. Yet he makes The Elderberries sound like an aural assault, capturing the band's live energy perfectly in the process.
The album soon took up residence on my iPod, making my usual hour-long walk in the mornings last only take fifty minutes on account of the music being high-energy, high-volume, high-fi rock.
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