French anti-folk surrealists GaBle´ are back in typically playful mood with new mini-LP I’m Ok. Touted as a response to Daniel Johnston’s Hi, How Are You?, it’s a genre-blurring mix of the folktronica of Tunng, the leftfield beat poetry of Bonzo Dog Do Dah Band, and the deconstructionist pop of Moldy Peaches.
I’m Ok continues in a similar, if less cohesive vein to last year’s critically-acclaimed Seven Guitars with a Cloud of Milk, with an English-speaking narrator spinning surreal, macabre poetry around a haphazard musical collage. The lyrics are thematic signposts which point all ways at once, leading nowhere. As on the title track, a delightful ditty that bursts into being with an optimistic chorus before a list of random objects is reeled off by the dead-pan narrator including the mystifying trio of, “dove; guillotine; teeth.” As your brain struggles to piece together the links between the words, it must do the same with the music, connecting the disparate elements of folk, jazz, electronica and rag time.
There is a mid-album sojourner into the darker instrumental territory of their Semineoproantintiantifolk album with the twisted beats and throbbing strings of Violons, Riots and Satan and Arms and Nose, Arms and Noise. Whereas the excellent closer, Sans Du Feu Dans Mes Mains is a warm Super Furries-esque swell of psychedelia.
The album’s thirteen tracks are over in a mere 22 minutes, but then these songs have no right, or in fact need, to extend beyond two minutes. They are part-realised narratives, playful glimpses of musical phrases rather than a conscious attempt to reveal a whole.
Existing simultaneously as a breath of fresh air and an overwhelming belch of many flavours, I’m Ok is an album of contradictions, whirring and clicking between postmodern playfulness and a mildly irritating irreverence towards form. In small doses I’m Ok is a happy chaos in a world full of dark insanity.
Released June 29th 2009 on Loaf Recordings
