Liturgies Contemporaines is an album I listened to several times a few weeks ago. Owing to the inevitable time constraints involved with holding down a full-time job and running a website such as this, it was one of the albums which I intended to review but did not get around to.

The news at the weekend that Eric Bouillette has passed away adds an extraordinary sadness to this review, and, indeed, places a real context in the English translation of Solace Supplice, namely comfort in times of great distress or pain. I did not know Eric but looking at the messages I have seen on social media, he was not only regarded as a fine musician, but also as a great friend to many. May he rest in peace.

So, to the album itself. Eric is the vocalist, alongside guitars, violin, and keyboards. His former Nine Skies collaborator, Anne-Claire Rallo, plays keyboards and bass (on some tracks). The drummer is Jimmy Pallagrosi, who has worked with the wonderful Hayley Griffiths, and on bass guitar, the prodigal daughter, namely Willow Beggs, whose playing is a revelation on this album and must have made her famous father, Nick, proud.

There are eleven songs on the album lasting 49 minutes, so nothing of epic length. I am unable to provide any meaningful sense of the lyrics, which are wholly in the singer’s native language. The opening track announces itself with a very old BBC Home Service broadcast telling us of a very important day (in those days, this was genuinely meant, as opposed to the modern media, where every hour brings itself a new “event” or “crisis”). Le tartuffe exemplaire (the supreme hypocrite) is a bright and breezy number to start proceedings, and aside from some very good guitar work, the thing that made me sit up and take notice immediately upon first listen was the exceptional bass grooves produced by Ms Beggs. It is the first instance of what is repeated throughout the album, and she has a very bright future indeed.

Rallo provides a similar thumping bass on Sunset Street, and this is an upbeat pop/rock number. There is a very good guitar solo, and the rhythm section especially provides for a very hypnotic feel set against the deep keyboard chords.

A demi-maux (half ailments, again somewhat ironic considering the sad news) features a frenetic sax solo (I believe by Laurent Benhamou), but I find the Floydian vocal effects to be somewhat grating in the background.

Les Miradors (the towers) is the longest track on the album at just short of seven minutes long. The opening is distinctly dystopian in its minor keys, and when the main track bursts into life, there is a similar feel, namely very dark and almost crying out for help, especially in the plaintive wailing vocals laid on top of a post rock set of riffs. The drums of Pallagrosi are especially frenetic here before the track slows down to an almost snail-like pace with a beautiful bassline and psych keyboards heralding a quite stark guitar solo before the pace picks up again. This is my favourite track on the album and is very well performed.

Cosmos adultérin (a universe born of adultery) follows. Again, the Beggs bass is exceptional, and it is pretty much crying out to us. Aside from this, there are more vocal effects from our BBC friend, and prior to the track opening up, it is starkly minimalist and as the track develops, we get more of that post rock feel with the deep clunking drums especially noticeable. It is, perhaps, too stark for my tastes, but in the context of the setting in which this review is being written, it makes a lot more sense and meaning to me than before.

Schizophrénie paranoïde requires no translation. It is a short track which brings us more of the darker pop/rock sensibilities we heard earlier in the album and there is a sense of the paranoia held within the title in the wildness of the music, and it closes with a guitar line which sounds like Gilmour pumped up with a healthy dose of speed.

Au cirque des âmes, or the circus of souls, opens with a child’s musical box (but not with notes to bring any sense of pleasure or joy) before Bouillette’s distinctly dark violin is introduced. Of course, I do not understand the vocals, but this track is, to me, a musical interpretation of a personal nightmare, perhaps that of the fear of the unknown to come. All instrumentation is distinctly doom-laden, and I found it a curiosity when I first heard it, but, again, in the context this review is being written in makes a whole lot more sense. It is not the type of track you would play to your polite guests at a dinner party to cheer them all up, but it is very darkly effective.

En guidant les hussards (guiding the hussars) has an introduction on the drums which reminds one very strongly of Assassing from Fugazi. As the track develops, I hear Notre Dames mentioned lyrically, and can only assume some spiritual element behind the lyrics. The smoky and jazzy saxophone solo is deeply impressive, and the sense of doom in the chords which underlie this are again palpable. I like this track a great deal. It is very dark and very effective, with some sensitive synths trying, but failing, to lift the core music.

The title track follows. It has a raw and stripped-back feel to it, and the varying noises and exceptional guitar pulls have a distinct liturgical feel to them. It doesn’t sound a great deal like Radiohead, but it does, to these ears, have that same sense of rock direction that band took after the electronic experimentation of Kid A and Amnesiac, and I do like the growing intensity of the guitar as the track develops.

Dans la couche du diable (in the devil’s bed) halfway through has the most achingly fragile guitar solo, and the musical feel of this track is very much more sensitive than much of what preceded it, almost as if it is a form of confessional. When the denouement begins in an explosion of sound with a frightening guitar scream set against some more very low-key keyboard chords, the regret and anger spills over and out.

The album closes with Marasmes et decadence, which I take to mean societal degradation achieved via decadence (a very common thought amongst many philosophical political commentators these days in the west), opens up with a distinct melancholic piano and sampled violin effects adding to the sense of doom, and the vocals when they kick in do not dispel this, with a very simple guitar chord adding to this, and the bass of Beggs motoring along. A minute and a half out, the track explodes into a more recognisable rock track, and the guitar solo is particularly strong here, deeply emotional, and almost raging against the world in a final bout of energy. I’m alive, and I want to stay that way.

It is the case that this is not the review I would have written a few weeks ago. Whilst the bare notes that I always set out on the first three listens are pretty much the same, the contextual adding of more detailed words and thoughts have clearly been impacted by the news we have been provided with, and I have to say that much of what is going on in this album makes far more sense in the light of Eric’s illness (I was not aware he was ill) and subsequent passing. Rather than merely talking about a sense of doom and dystopia, the whole album feels and sounds like that of a passionate man and his friends and bandmates making a statement of life. That burning of energy and passion in the face of that inevitability.

Whatever the context, though, this is a good album. It is never anything less than interesting, and certainly as a musical legacy has much to commend it.