Tamas posses a delicate voice and backs it up with softly picking acoustic guitars and flourishes of tambourine, piano, organ and mandolin.
The songs on A Plea en Vendredi are sombre and wistful, beautiful and frail - the perfect accompaniment to a quiet Sunday drive in the country. Also good music to fall in love to or nurse a broken heart. The songs often have a soaring, reaching-to-heaven quality that recalls Brian Wilson's work on Pet Sounds. The occasional and wonderful vocal polyphonies, too, seem to invoke Wilson's notion of a "teenage symphony to God".
I was expecting David Tibet's characteristic yowl to jump out of "Yes, Virginia, There Is A Ruling Class" - what with it's mournful, highly dramatic piano arpeggios. It's a pretty diversion that helps to advance and enhance the general tone of the album. He returns to piano composition on "Melon Street Book Club", this time adding mandolins and other orchestral flourishes. Has that sort of sentimental down-on-one's luck tone one might expect from Irish musicians such as Van Morrison or The Pogues. Very nice.
At just under 34 minutes, Wells keeps it short and sweet – another lesson he might have learned from Brian Wilson. A Plea En Vendredi will soothe the most jangled of nerves and lap at the heart in warm gentle waves. A beautiful album.
- From Prying Plans Into the Fire
- Valder Fields
- vendredi
- Lichen and Bees
- Ves, Virginia, There Is A Ruling Class
- The opportunity Fair
- valour
- The telemarketer Resignation
- I'm Sorry that the kitchen is on fire
- Melon Street Book Club
- Open The Blinds
