À VOS DÉSIRS

It was past the halfway point of the decade of the mandatory side long suite and still nothing of the sort from GWENDAL. This must have precipitated quite the discussion amongst the band members, who clearly didn't have anything in the can to support an "epic or bust" doctrine. But hey, with most of these samey jigs and reels, and with maybe a bit less on the jazz front, no listener would be able to tell if we started off with something a bit more creative and then interlaced an odd half dozen rejects from the first 2 albums, giving it an overarching grandiose name like "Mon Joly Scooter", which segues flawlessly into my other point: virtually none of the shorter tracks, whether within or without this unambiguously unambitious concoction, even raises its shackles let alone snips them. Thankfully a few re-interpretations of standards like "Cam Ye all Frae France" and "Butterfly" are welcome even if they would have been little more than reinforced padding on the group's previous album, from which "A vos desirs" represents a couple of missed steps down the evolutionary ladder.