LE JOUR OÙ LES VACHES...

Emmanuel Booz's debut album was a completely different story than it's follow up "Le Jour où les Vaches...", the music was purely acoustic more in the vein of Bob Dylan or Arlo Guthrie whom he tributed and did a full cover of his most known work Alice's Restaurant, taking up the whole first side, in spite of that it didn't come to me as a shocking surprise of how good this album is, since i could see how talented this guy was, judging by the second side of his debut consisting of original songs. 5 years have past since his debut and that was enough time for him to grow as a musician and a writer, surrounding himself with great musicians Emmanuel Booz has managed to create an amazing album filled with beautiful catchy compositions, great amount of sensibility and overall a good mix between folk rock and progressive rock.

What strikes me the most are the impeccable beautiful orchestrated arrangements done here, taking a quick look of the line up on the album, it's not quite surprising since William Sheller is there by Emmanuel's side taking care of arrangements and playing the piano, Sheller already known for his mix between classical and pop music fits here like a glove and taking Booz's compositions to a higher level, quite resembling George Martin's work with the beatles, truly the work of a genious. The music is symphonic classical orchestrated with no signs of jazz in sight, mixed with eclectic prog and some zehul characteristics. The atmosphere is mostly dark, and always serious it can move through different mood changes, from mellow and quiet to very disturbing and intense, the orchestra is also very varied in style, since it's a big part of the music it can caress with lush symphonic violins or be very creepy and disturbing, phenomenal stuff really. Booz is also varied in his vocals and in his approach reminding me of Tim Buckley, he is doing a great job, very passionate vocals fusing some opera like vocals done by additional vocalists. The music is filled with delicious ideas coming to life with various instruments like horns, violins and more making this all quite interesting and progressive but still mainting a song format, it's always haunting using tension build up and some theatrical elements, i swear sometimes i feel like i'm watching a show. Drums, bass, guitar and some vocals are done by the members of other french band Alice which by that time was close to disband and was only participating in other projects such as this and Alpes for example. Guitar is never heavy but quite subtle, it appears here and there without going to the front but still enjoyable. Production is good and as opposed to other attempts to mix orchestra and a rock band here it doesn't come sounding far off. I very much like the fact that the songs are different from each other, sometimes the orchestra is in the front leading the song and sometimes it's in the back filling out. It is quiet at times but even in those moments you can feel the madness awaits you just around the corner.

Emmanuel Booz took a giant leap here and presented us with a well crafted album that would appeal to many fans of progressive rock across few genres. Vocals are of course in french but certainly that shouldn't bother anybody, since it fits perfectly with the music. I am really tempted to give this the 5 star, but i'm holding my self back, so it's actually 4.3 stars for this masterfull work.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!