Description
10 years in the making, 'I wish Dee Dee Ramone was here with me' is Marionneau's long awaited follow up to the highly thought of 'I Killed My Best Friend'. Its originality shares something with outsider art: naïve, primitive, primal, rather than following the standard rules.
Set for release via Pickpocket Records - run by Charlotte Marionneau and Kevin Shields (My Bloody Valentine) - Marionneau builds upon the melodic, experimental aesthetic, creating an equally individual, curiously titled album to its predecessor. The album's opener, 'Born To Lie', commences like the initial blooming of a seed, sprouting with an understated beauty. A fleeting percussive introduction expands into a beautifully haunting score that instantly evokes an intriguing atmosphere that runs throughout the whole album.
Next is 'I Love The Living You'. Featured in Nick Moran's (Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels / Harry Potter) 'The Kid', and name checking Kevin Shields on guitar, 'I Love The Living You' is one of the albums more stripped back productions.
Initially a poem, 'I Wish Dee Dee Ramone Was Here With Me' is not just simply an ode to the late great Ramone, but an angelic and endearing depiction of a lonely evening, prompted by Marionneau's late night reading; unsurprisingly, a book on the man himself. 'Rusty' then erupts from the melancholy that precedes it, yet maintains the effortless and earnest tone previously mapped out. Where 'Rusty' transcends, 'Le Petit Chevalier' hones it back in, exchanging the distorted drive for a downbeat eloquence.
Eerily infectious, 'Lazy' is a musical Jekyll & Hyde, switching back and forth from an evangelical chime to a pulsating, industrial piece of experimental pop. The Pitchfork lauded 'The house' follows. Co-mixed with Brendan Lynch (Paul Weller / The Rakes), 'The house' bursts with a lo-fi intensity, doused in dream-like flitters.
The penultimate track, 'Monte Dans Mon Ambulance', which features Martin Duffy (Felt / Primal Scream), opens the beginning of the end in a sullen, downbeat tone. 'The mind is a horse version' then bolsters the darkness that broods submissively throughout, in what is an experimentally emphatic closer.
Harnessing a plethora of genres into a coherent linear, 'I Wish Dee Dee Ramone Was Here With Me' is a tour'de'force. Well thought, organic and inviting; from the ambivalent intensity of "Soap On, Soap Off" to "Monte Dans Mon Ambulance", and from the full-blooded swing, swagger and whistles of "Rusty" to the subtly sonic swellings and broodings of "The House", the album is laced with surprises, subversions and a refreshing candour which sets this apart from anything else. It's a unique, compelling listen.
