Le SuperHomard - MeadowLanePark

(This review first appeared in issue #88 of Shindig! magazine.)


There's a strain of cinematic French music that feeds head and heart, and is fixed on the central tenets of style and sophistication. You can join the dots from Jean Claude Vannier to Air through to its latest progenitors - Le SuperHomard, an Avignon-based quintet led by Christophe Vaillant.

MeadowLanePark is the group's first full-length LP following 2015's mini-album The Maple Key and recent release The Pomegranate EP. Recorded during closed hours in the music shop where Vaillant works, the results are a joy, ebbing through sunshine pop, breezy electro, and gently playful psychedelia. The group make good use of the instruments to hand with vintage synths, harpsichords and strings making up the sonic palette. The band's key influences (Stereolab, Saint Etienne, Broadcast) can be heard but their sense of self wins out. Whether it's the evocative instrumental 'In The Park' or the electronic textures of 'SDVB', MeadowLanePark is one of this years early gems.

Le SuperHomard - MapleKey

10” LP of super cool modernist lounge music! The soundtrack to the best cult movie that never got made!

Best band name of the year must surely go to France's Le SuperHomard. They take their name from a club featured in '60s French crime caper flick Let's Not Get Angry. OK, so in English, The Great Lobster might lose some of it's cool but the music the band make is as groovy and sophisticated as you'd expect.

Le SuperHomard is the brainchild of Christophe Vaillant, formerly of Pony Taylor, and started as a solo project before the addition of his brother Olivier on drums and friend Pandora Burgess who sings lead vocal on four of the tracks. Together they've swapped Pony Taylor's garage rock for a more optimistic and breezy style of electronic pop.

Musically Le SupeHomard are part retrogressive cool and part forward looking indie nonchalance; stylish, intelligent and the epitome of Gallic élan. There's a lot packed in to the album's eight tracks; from the propulsive bass and drum clatter of 'Intro' through the gentle electronic dreaminess of 'MapleKey' and lo-fi folktronica on 'Bituminized', it all fits together. Taken as a whole the album has a definite widescreen cinematic vibe and comes across as the soundtrack to the best cult movie that never got made.

MapleKey is out now in the UK on Mega Dodo Records on CD or limited edition 10” white vinyl.

Click here for Le SuperHomard on Twitter.

Click here for LeSuperHomard on Facebook

Click here for Mega Dodo Records.