84

Although Sébastien Gramond's 'numbered' albums may seem even based on their uninspired names that they wouldn't offer much to the French multi-instrumentalist's discography. However, as this album's predecessor '83' proved quite clearly, some really good stuff can be heard on these, despite the fact that there isn't much put into the presentation of these works. While '83' was a rather solemn ambient soundtrack album, '84' takes things in a very opposite direction, going down the route of straightforward, slightly proggy hard rock. Although the problematic issues throughout the album make little effort to hide themselves, Sébastien Gramond has a decent bunch of rocking songs here, certainly worth a listen or two before the album's weaknesses begin getting too noticeable.

In true hard rock tradition, many of the songs here are about sexual relations. 'Sexual Tourist' makes its subject matter clear from the title alone, while other pithy tunes here like 'Seek My Duck' obviously make grand efforts to avoid the censorship rats. In terms of sound though, things are generally maintained in a realm of riff-based classic rock inspired tracks, with licks aplenty. The guitars crank the volume, and deliver enough force to drive the decent songwriting, but at the heavy cost of sound quality. It is the sound quality which turns out to be '84's biggest issue. While it is clear Gramond is taking pre-existing hard rock tricks of volume amplification to heart, it ends up resulting in an album that feels muddier and more crowded than most of his other records.

The songwriting is rather simple, with the exception of a few moments where the time signatures are swept up a bit. A decent album to put on in the background, although there is not much originality to warrant the rather punitive production.

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