Fly Pan Am – C’est Ça

Constellation

It is hard to believe that Fly Pan Am have been away since 2006. Always Constellation‘s joker in the pack, their latest album carries on their rich tradition of genre-hopping, song sabotage and listener discomfort as if N’écoutez Pas were only yesterday.

The opener “Avant-gardez Vous” does exactly what you wouldn’t expect from any other band that has been away for thirteen years, and that is fling a brittle sound collage right in your face with hardly a “welcome, we’ve missed you” in sight. Somebody chewing, metallic gurgles, random clicks and cracks, they are all cut up and spat out in a brief but terse ear-rinsing that genuinely couldn’t be anybody else.

Their love of motorik groove hasn’t left them, and the light, insistent drums and some strange slurping effect enhance “Distance Dealer”, but it is the addition of their trademark bass sound that really propels things along. There is something elastic about Jean Sébastian Truchy‘s playing which, as the notes ascend in their quest for their own satisfying peak, causes shivers down the spine. The sense of forward motion is something they share with labelmates Do Make Say Think, but whereas they will allow a track to pursue a natural course, Fly Pan Am will always find some way of causing disruption.

Here, the disruption is only the introduction of dreamy, French-sounding vocals and the distant sound of ships shimmering over a My Bloody Valentine haze. It is quite a statement of intent for the first two tracks, and once again things volte face as “Dleeding Decay” sounds like computer downloads overrunning one another to a simple drumbeat that draws more eviscerated sounds into its orbit, with the bass once again stunning. The disruption here is in the form of some startling vocal shrieking that wouldn’t be out of place on a death metal album, but they seem to be duetting with a robot and the whole thing is distinctly unexpected.

These juxtapositions are all over the album; a harmonium squeeze on “Dizzy Delusions” shares space with a tone-bent MBV drift, while the crashing cymbals of “Alienage Syntropy” are tied to a sinister drone that feels like a camera pan around an abandoned factory still under some form of power, a machinery test that shuffles and grinds its way around the different floors. Side two does allow things to extend out a little more; “One Hit Wonder” is a slow-moving psychedelic excursion, ensconced in the back of a luxury car, the whirr of signs and other road markings the only sense of the world outside. That is until the car comes to a halt and some random stranger starts to vent his spleen, having a breakdown in a desolate part of town.

Suddenly, things don’t feel so calming and the drone soundscape of “Discreet Channeling” isn’t too relaxing either, with its bass, drum and dirty noise intervals infected by hissing whispers that appear from the floorboards. It is amazing how they can summon up such atmospheres, but then turn on a sixpence and head off in a completely different direction. The final track shares some space with Do Make Say Think again, but travels from drift to scream to ponderous plod to silence in rapid succession, before disappearing and then reappearing in a radioactive daze that crackles with motor noise and dust — until the power runs out and silence reigns again.

I can honestly say that this is a hell of a comeback. Their joy and perversity are both there in equal measure, and I can only hope that Fly Pan Am have more in the can, and it isn’t another thirteen years before they upset our brain pans again.

-Mr Olivetti-