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the berg sans nipple - along the quai (team love)
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AC-CENT-TCHU-ATE
THE POSITIVE (Mister In-Between)
(Johnny Mercer / Harold Arlen)
'You've got to accentuate the positive
Eliminate the negative
Latch on to the affirmative
Don't mess with Mister In-Between'
i t's three years since this Franco-American duo produced their début
album, Form Of, an album of such extraordinary peerlessness
that one jaded hack was moved at the time to wonder whether it wouldn't be
best for everyone if they simply retired after that and saved everyone the
squirming anguish of calculating just how disappointing their second album
was statistically certain to be. I (whoops) couldn't imagine how they could
possibly follow up such a totally satisfying piece of work. But they didn't
(retire) and they have (followed it up), and, gentle listener, I'm delighted
if chastened to report that we can all now let go that purple-pent breath,
let loose a lolloping whoop-halloo talloo-tallay, and let our jiggy holiday
clogs go cut their clattering caper, for - hey - they did it (produced a follow-up
that neither sucks nor blows but positively RATTLES) and I managed to say
all that without using either of the two musical clichés I've declared
total war on (the first about second albums that begins with soph... and doesn't
end with Ellis-Bextor, and the other that's about lengthy anticipation, and
rhymes with - and is - hyphenated).
here's a suggestion - gratis - for any media Masters student out there scratching
his or her head in search of a subject for their dissertation: research and
compile a database of the support gigs an established band played at the beginning
of their career and the bands which, once established, it in turn has invited
to support, and see if you can extrapolate from that a taxonomy of musical
influence. (I'm kinda serious - this would save us a lot of work here at Rhino
Towers)
here in the UK, most people's introduction to Berg Sans Nipple (which at that
time lacked the 'The' - one for the trivia box) was as support to Do Make
Say Think's autumn tour of 2003. most shockingly, there was much muttering,
at the time, that they had completely upstaged their employers, which is neither
here nor there, now (particularly now, with DMST's utterly wonderful new album
- You, You're A History in Rust- released - coincidentally,
one assumes - practically at the same time), but the point is worth making
- that in a world increasingly desperate for meaning, the only meaningful
signs seem to occur through such fortuitous association-forks: The Berg Sans
Nipple are as effectively defined by that early association with Do Make Say
Think as are Sigur Rós by their millennium support gigs with Godspeed
You! Black Emperor (pre-'!', incidentally) and Radiohead (and which of you
lucky lucky mortals remembers either of those gigs, then? hands up. I hate
you.)
you might, if you were so inclined, call The Berg's sound a combination of
fusion jazz, breaks, noise rock and voice-tinted electronica, but that kind
of generic pitchforking only really gets you through but one of the multifarious
side doors of perception - the reality of what's on offer here is as eclectic
as it is heartfelt, and, in the one way that uniquely connects the arts and
science, is as resistant to description as any quantum effect. one of those
effects, though, is unequivocal - The Berg, like their cheery Canadian buddies,
come across as the veritable Gilbert Grapes of post-rock - intent only on
beaming out the uncompromisingly positive stuff, however complex and odd that
might sound, with nary a hint of a grumble to be heard.
like a roisterous, quintessentially subversive carnival (complete with steel
drums that sound suspiciously like empty wine-bottles) this glorious album
rolls relentlessly through the troubled banlieues of our minds, effecting
the kind of magic-sprinkled momentary suspensions of time and space that in
turn allow the seeding of - dare one say it - a kind of psychic liberation.
as they said in '68: "Soyez réalistes, demandez l'impossible"
("Be realistic, demand the impossible"). and under this odd couple's
beguiling spell, even such time-mildewed tokens of shattered dreams seem to
find a new expression.
February 2007
