Le Sang Song - S/T (2010) || Album Review

Le Sang Song -- Le Sang Song (2010)

"Cause livin' on the edge can tend to make you lean"

MARCH 3, 2010 

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Le Sang Song. Yeah, that's the name of this band... and there's not much more to know. After looking at his 'space, this was all the information I could gather: from Seattle, has lots of sunglasses and he's wrote a few songs. He doesn't have a show booked nor does he make any other "obvious" information available.


After some digging, I found that Le Sang Song is the one-man solo project of Craig Chambers. Chambers plays minimalistic, french-pop influenced folk rock. Whatever you may be thinking to this point, know this: Le Sang Song is completely endearing and surprising as well. On this album, Chambers attempts to do two things: create unadulterated, raw, classic folk rock and dabble within the realms of french psych-pop without officially changing his name to Serge. 


Songs like Death vs. The Rich, War and The One create a certain authentic folk feel and atmosphere. The raw, natural reverbs and mixture of acoustic and fuzz guitars create a wall of sound that is almost reminiscent of Paint It Black era 'Stones. This isn't to say Le Sang Song sounds like The Rolling Stones (See: 40 seconds in to War); more along the lines of, Chambers created a lo-fi, folky solo act and is unafraid to flaunt his roots while doing some experimenting of his own. 

Additionally, songs like Hot Reggae, Ring Ring, and even No Love are more along the lines of minimalistic (not in quality, in progression), are examples of the type of "pop" songs Chambers could produce (I say "pop" because I don't really mean Pop -- this ain't Justin Bieber). Catchy, dark and light alike, and enjoyably challenging. Ring Ring definitely has a very french pop feel, at about :50 seconds into the song, it almost sounds as if hes singing in french, along the lines of Mr. Gainsbourg himself.


After analyzing what I thought was Le Sang Songs main motive -- creating two genre-fied types of songs (knowingly or unknowingly) -- I then realized that this album is actually a pretty cohesive work and it should be viewed as a whole. Sure, the sounds definitely jump around, changing moods at the end of a track, but the ethic and feel of the album runs rampant throughout. The change of style only enhances Chambers ability to create differing, creative and unique songs.

I love this album. I really hope this guy decides to continue Le Sang Song and/or play a show (preferably, in the Tri-State area... though, that may be pushing it).


Links:
http://www.myspace.com/lesangsong
http://www.last.fm/music/Le+Sang+Song
http://www.seattleweekly.com/2010-01-13/calendar/le-sang-song/
http://music.is-amazing.com/2010/01/13/le-sang-song


-RB