In the past two years, D.C.’s Le Loup has evolved from an experimental solo project to a cohesive art-rock collective. The band’s 2007 debut, The Throne Of The Third Heaven Of The Nations’ Millennium General Assembly, was predominantly a pet project of frontman Sam Simkoff—an intriguing assortment of psychedelic banjo jams, tweaked-out drum machine backbeats, and other experimental bedroom tinkerings. Le Loup took a drastically different approach to its aptly named follow-up, Family, retreating to a North Carolina cabin (and later a basement in Silver Spring), disconnecting all communication with the outside world, and collaborating during the songwriting process. The result is an intoxicatingly warm and complex album, which captures a sound that’s simultaneously familiar and experimental, accessible and esoteric—a sound that manages to borrow respectfully without seeming stale or contrived. This note of collaborative maturity will be on full display when the quintet hits up The Black Cat tomorrow night. It’s difficult to discuss Family without sputtering off a list of vaguely comparable indie acts—the layered cooperative vocals and dissonant tribal arrangements of Animal Collective, the harmonic country charm of Fleet Foxes, the achy vocals of Justin Vernon. But such analogies tend to imply that Family is little more than an art-rock pastiche, which is a disservice to Le Loup’s distinctive sound. The record’s first few tracks play like a tasting of internationally flavored Americana: “Saddle Mountain” opens with banjo-sprinkled Gregorian chants, “Beach Town” seamlessly floats from a danceable samba beat into an Afro-pop jam, and “Grow” swells like a Panda Bear cover of an early-'60s doo-wop hit, backed, no less, by a rhythm that might have been stripped from the studio recording of “Be My Baby.”
From there, Family takes on a more billowing, folky tone, shifting focus to the band as a collective unit. On “Family,” “Forgive Me,” and “Sherpa,” for instance, every verse, refrain, and chorus is shared among the five band members. There’s a certain comfort in the flattened structure of these harmonies—the entire band shares a single melody as if it were a collective family belonging. The record culminates in an eight-minute epic, “A Celebration,” arguably the best track Le Loup has put out yet. There’s a polished sense of composition here, driven by Robert Sahm’s intricate, unpredictable percussion, Simkoff’s echoing vocals, and a slew of perplexing effects in the periphery.
It’s worth noting one potential cause for frustration in Family’s second half. Le Loup has a tendency to begin tracks with faint, at times almost inaudible atmospheric textures—say, the minute-long hodgepodge of swishing water and ticking clocks to start “Sherpa” or the opening swirls of synths and guitars in “Go East”—which ends up feeling a little too overboard. This near-dead air can be exasperating for anyone that’s jonesing for a quick hook fix, but there’s also a hypnotic allure in these movements. If you can manage to keep your finger off the fast-forward button, it’ll make the subsequent build-up that much more rewarding.
Perhaps it’s just a coincidence that Le Loup included a song named “Go East” in Family, or maybe it’s a deliberate response to Throne’s “Look To The West”—as if to acknowledge the band’s journey over the past couple years. Gone are the days of a talented loner fiddling with a Casio in the D.C. suburbs. On Family, Le Loup emerges as a tight-knit band of talented instrumentalists, a band that fully embraces collaboration and appreciates the power of sticking to its roots.
Grade: A-
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