Benoît Pioulard
Précis

[Kranky; 2007]

Styles: reberbed out loner pop
Others: My Bloody Valentine, The Shins, The Microphones

Benoît Pioulard isn’t actually his name, and the existential pseudonym provides the perfect framework for the music within his full-length debut (excluding homemade tapes and CDRs), Précis. Thomas Meluch, a young man from Michigan, would have been too easily lumped in with a crowd of singer/songwriter types that wouldn’t appreciate his true talents. Placing his acoustic guitar in the forefront and his voice in the background amidst various lo-fi noise and interference, he’s made it clear that his greatest skill is as a producer, and songwriting is a decision that falls under that blanket. He’s got the reverberated ambiguity of a shoegazer, and behind the haze there are indeed some decent songs.

Yes, “decent” certainly falls short of an enthusiastic description, but it’s actually quite enough when working within Meluch’s parameters. In “Triggering Back,” perhaps the best ’song’ on the album, he calls attention to its strengths by pulling back on the atmospherics a bit. (Ultimately, it’s just another nod to his mastery of home production and arrangements.) It’s obvious that he’s spent as much (and possibly more) time crafting his strange noises as he has his melodies, and no matter how much his lyrics may mean, the total experience of Précis is something less literal and more subjective. It’s a solid debut, but the big question is where he’s headed with all this. He could either go the route of Kevin Shields, further drowning himself in layered cloudiness, or he could be touring with Sufjan Stevens next year. It’s a total toss-up…

1. La Guerre De Sept Ans 2. Together & Down 3. Ext. Leslie Park 4. Triggering Back 5. Moth Wings 6. Alan & Dawn 7. Corpus Chant 8. Palimend 9. Coup De Foudre 10. Hirondelle 11. Needle & Thread 12. R Coloring 13. Sous La Plage 14. Patter 15. Ash Into The Sky