samedi 16 octobre 2021

Cochonne

 


Cochonne is a quartet hailing from Durham, North Carolina, which existed between 2019 and late 2020 or early 2021 something like that.
For the (unlucky) non French speakers Cochonne originally means female pig but is mostly used as a slightly gross, but not really offensive word to describe a sexually dirty girl (the kind of word used in porn you know).
You're welcome.
 
I don't know much about the members of Cochonne except that Mimi Luse (the bassist and vocalist) speaks French and recently released a solo album under the name Permanent.
 
 
 

First self-released and then out on Sorry State, Cochonne's debut tape burst into the world in late 2019.
I did not pay much attention to this tape at the time (I don't know why really) but I'm glad I got back to it now, it's a very good piece of post-punk with solid female vocals which recalls many great bands from different eras as I will be pleased to detail in the coming paragraphs (yes ma'am).



Cochonne plays some kind of sleek mid-tempo songs with really upfront female vocals (Mimi's high pitched voice and perfectly mastered singing technique is impressive), upfront jerky drumming and minimal guitar and synth layers. The whole thing gives a very strong (and charming) teenager punk band atmosphere (in the sense of clumsiness and "honest" naïvety of a young persons' band) to a tape that is not nearly as flimsy as this sentence might suggest.

I said post-punk but I hear as much early Pylon as early classic US punk (X and Avengers in a track like Body Bag for example) as European punk (The Slits, The Raincoats and Las VulpeSS but most of all Kleenex/Liliput in tracks like Omega and Horror-Scope) and anarcho punk (a bit of Crass and Lost Cherrees in the vocals maybe?) in Cochonne's six tracks (ok I could add a bit of no wave here and there with the Scissor Girls for example). But as I'm into heavy name-dropping let's get into more recent ones: ok I can think of Autor from Vienna, of some Spam Risk tracks and, of course, of NOTS and Table Sugar.... ok ok I stop here it's way more than enough I know but names and references just keep popping up in my mind when I listen to Cochonne, what can I do?
 
After hours of trying to figure out what Mensonge Humain (Human Lie), sung in French, reminded me of (except for a discrete Lucrate Milk influence in some parts), I finally remembered the Maraudeur (from Leipzig) track called C'est Caché and yes yes there's some common ground here. I still feel like something else's gonna pop up from the back of my mind any time soon... well anyway let's move on!
 
I have to mention the very surprising (and very good) F21 which starts like a beautiful "punk ballad" where Mimi can let burst all her vocal knowledge in what could sound at times like a tribute to Darby Crash by Quix*o*tic. Fun fact, the track "comes back to life" after six minutes of silence after its end for a good old hidden track (damn it's been a while) full of heavy bass lines, offbeat discussions and high pitched humming... a kind of modern and deviant Cramps song ?

Let's make it short, I love Cochonne's minimalist post punk: It is good!
I still can't understand how I missed it two years ago, this is absolutely brilliant.
 
 
 

 
 After a little change of line-up (the drummer) and for their first vinyl but final release (RIP female pig), Cochonne is back on Sorry State with a 5-track 12" called Emergency and a deeply disturbing cover artwork made by Jack Thegen-Crowley.



And the atmosphere has changed quite a bit (influence of the new drummer?), the rhythms are more frantic, the vocals are more "dazzling", more all over the place in a kind of "arty punk" way if you know what I mean, making Cochonne's new materials probably even closer to what Nots has been doing for years than the "old" one.
 
It starts with Qu'est-ce que t'as fait? (What have you done?) and Asking For A Friend, two perfect arty/no-wave songs in the pure spirit of bands like Lucrate Milk (for the 80s French version) or, more recently, Preening for the US version (even if there is no saxophone yes I know). Then comes KGB, probably the weakest song of the record in my opinion, which lacks of something to be really striking. But then there is Trop (Too Much), my favorite Emergency track where Mimi loses her mind, falls into some kind of delirium where she repeats in loop, like a mantra, that "it amuses her" or that "she enjoys it" (ça m'amuse) like a little brat playing with a dead cat or something like that. Unfortunately the song comes back for a "second round", avoidable and a bit painful, whereas the end was obvious after two and a half rather pleasant minutes.
 
 
  And the band concludes Emergency (and their recording career as it seems) with Vampire, which 3D animation video clip is right above this line. Although I find this kind of 3D animation particularly ugly, the video is rather amusing although it doesn't fit the music at all in terms of rhythm. The song is not bad but not great either, a bit like the whole record in the end in my opinion.
Yes to be honest I'm not as enthusiast about this record as I am about the tape, once again the whole thing is not bad but it does not sound like something I will enjoy going back to regularly, it lacks consistency between the tracks and I'm not really hooked.
But don't listen to me, listen to Cochonne
 

N,J'Oi!

 
 

You can listen to Cochonne on Rien à Faire #27.




  

 


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