LES PORCHES

Lots of flute, clarinet, and plenty of keyboards. That pretty much describes Maneige’s instrumentation. Throw in some very delicate and understated acoustic guitar, and a fair amount of varied percussion. But the flute and piano dominate nearly this entire album, which was only finally released on CD last year (at least I’m not aware of any earlier CD issue).

Maneige are probably most closely compared to Harmonium, or at least this album is. I’m not too familiar with the rest of their work. But this one is simply gorgeous. The piano passages are heavily inspired by classic composers, and both “Les Porches de Notre-Dame” and “Les Aventures de Saxinette et Clarophone” seem to go on forever. The other two short passages are little more than filler, but they do a nice job of joining the bookend epic compositions.

On the brass end are copious helpings of saxophone (on ‘Les Porches’) and clarinet on the final track, plus just a smidgen of trombone. ‘Les Porches’ also features a wonderfully robust burst of electric guitar in the final couple of minutes that belies the sedate tone of the rest of the album. As opposed to some of the band’s later and more boisterous post-rock Canadian countrymen, Maneige don’t build to a cacophonic crescendo in their songs. Instead they slowly (very, very slowly) build to a higher- tempo stage in the two longer songs with seemingly endless variations and diversions on the main theme, then bask in the glory of their work by cutting loose just a bit to close out each number. Rather novel and very well done.

Like Harmonium, these guys are hard to classify. Any time a flute enters the picture there will be those who instantly jump on the folk bandwagon, but other than that instrument the label doesn’t seem appropriate here. The shorter tracks smack of free- form jazz, especially “Chromo”, but neither of the longer works that dominate the album really fit into a jazz mold. Symphonic? Maybe, especially “Les Porches de Notre-Dame”, but take away the piano and other keyboards and the rest of the arrangement doesn’t hold up to symphonic scrutiny.

So decide for yourself, but regardless I would rate this as a solid four-star effort and highly recommended to just about anyone who is into symphonic rock or Francophile Canadian seventies art rock, or really just about anyone except possibly metal or RIO/ avant-prog fans. A very enjoyable and mellow record that has aged extremely well these past thirty-plus years.

peace