Review: “The Limiñanas”
November 4, 2010
In my mind, the French are urban sophisticates, quietly disparaging the latest gallery opening as they huddle together in their smoke-filled cafés. Any French music I hear, then, gets placed in this mental milieu. Fortunately, the music of The Limiñanas seems singularly well-suited to smoky air and low ceilings. On their debut self-titled LP, Lionel and Marie Limiñana have given us a solid set of buzzy, reverb-drenched, low-fi garage rock that is at once timelessly retro and singularly French.
The songs themselves are pretty minimalist in construction. Most songs are built on a single guitar or organ riff that repeats with little variation for the duration of the song. As such, the same two to three chords form an ostenato bass throughout. This may sound dreadful on paper, but John Adams built entire operas of such endless repetition, and those operas were hypnotically powerful as a result. While no where near the scale of, say, “Nixon in China,” “The Limiñanas” is similarly hypnotic. The songs build interest not through the traditional verse/chorus structure but because of the gradual shifts in harmony and timbre that come from the changes in inflection that occur throughout each track. In any given song, the repeating ostenato becomes its entire harmonic language, and varying that ostenato would break the song’s hypnotic spell. Through insistent repetition, even the harsh ukelele dissonances in “Chocolate in my Milk” sound logical and even inevitable.
This album has a poignant sound that recalls the end of summer. The ringing guitar chords echo old surf guitar groups like The Ventures, and the occasional dissonant chords sound very bittersweet with this instrumentation. Some of the songs borrow ostenato patterns from other, earlier songs, (opener ‘The Darkside’ uses the same pattern as ‘Migas 2000,’ off their debut 7” single) and this makes the additional songs sound familiar and even nostalgic.
I recognize that this album may not be everybody’s cup of espresso. I have friends that thrive on constant change in their music, and I’m sure they would be bored to tears by this album. For my part, I find “The Limiñanas” to be utterly enchanting every time I listen to it.
Like it? You can download this track for free over at The Needle Drop.
