Bryan's Magic Tears - 4 AM (2018)

Remember those moth-eaten American bands on unreachable Midwest labels that, in the mid-1990s, would drop choruses that would make the Smashing Pumpkins green with envy, with the crummiest sound in the history of electricity? Maybe not. Well, Bryan's Magic Tears could have been one of them. This project launched four years ago by Benjamin Dupont (Dame Blanche), which features members and ex-members of La Secte Du Futur and Marietta, indeed has it all to occupy this niche, which, by the way, has quite fallen into disuse these days: toxic melodies, guitars oscillating between whiplashes and caresses, ghostly sonorities and a convoluted name referring to some obscure Parisian acid dealer.
But wait: this is not about a vain stylistic exercise put together by some gifted kids who fantasize about a time they missed, nor a sad revivalist meeting of old farts who still haven’t gotten over turning 40. If listening to Bryan's Magic Tears brings the 90s to mind, it's not because of the sound – which, as it happens, is very close to that of their tour partners Le Villejuif Underground or Jessica93 – but because of a state of mind that was peculiar to the time and to this particular moment in adolescence, when the last illusions aroused by the fall of the Berlin Wall were slowly fading away, when the dark clouds of the first Gulf War were piling up; this carefree, jaded spleen perfectly depicted in Gregg Araki's films or in songs by Sebadoh, Beat Happening or Nirvana – or even in this famous line from Lou Reed's "Romeo Had Juliet": "It's hard to give a shit these days ".

A state of mind that remains pure, intact, limpid in Bryan's Magic Tears music, free from any posture or cynicism, at the service of insane titles – real hazy hits forged in some triumphant fire – which made their first album, released late 2016 on XVIII Records, one of the most beautiful records to come out of the French independent scene in the 2010-2020 season. And we find it again today, even more intense and precise on xxxx, a collection of insane hits – “Ghetto Blaster", "CEO", "Changes", the whole album could actually be mentioned. A record made for those clear and cool days of spring when everything suddenly looks brighter, clearer and more intense. A record that recalls what it feels like to miss the last train of the day and realize you are just short of what it would cost to buy a ticket for the next day. An obvious, indestructible, lunar, romantic, arrogant, phlegmatic, disillusioned record. In short, a record that makes you wish you were 18 again. How many bands could be talked about like that, these days?