The members of chest. “have breathed music through every pore, having first connected in the darkness and vibrations of Supersonic, one of Paris’ beating hearts of independent music”. They could have called themselves Poitrine, but this would have made it more difficult to find them on Google, what with everyone losing their minds about masked microtonalists Angine de Poitrine.
chest. are French post-punk except that their singer Elliot Selwood is English. On new single ‘Lotus Eater’ he has the lairy, swaggering tone of a Londoner casting dismissive glances at people in the club. “You’re not edgy, you’re not hard, you’re a drunk old man.” He even uses the c word at one point, and that word is not chest. In the video for ‘Lotus Eater’, Selwood very sensibly spends a lot of time in the bath (the heat in Paris must be truly awful right now). Less sensibly, he places his head in a tray of vegetables wrapped in cling film.
The robotic Morse code beginning of ‘Lotus Eater’ could have come from an UNKLE record. The synth could be Numan and the clanging guitar and crisp drums on the chorus could be Killing Joke. This is dark punk not daft punk. If you’re fond of imagining yourself striding through the detritus of your local pleasure venue like a headteacher channelling T-1000, stick on ‘Lotus Eater’.
‘Lotus Eater’ is out now on Howlin’ Banana
chest.’s album Happy, Broken will be released on 16th October.
Review by Neil Laurenson
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