30.07.2016 / Estivale Open Air

Skip The Use

Venue
Estivale Open Air
Estival Open Air, Estavayer-le-Lac:
www.estival.ch

Tickets:

https://etickets.infomaniak.com


In these days of cannibalistic politics, anonymous technologies and deceptive fears, days when people are denied, ignored and treated as mere lucrative tools, music has a role to play. Not just as entertainment to help us forget and patch up our wounds. Music can and must open our eyes, free our bodies and bring light to our darkness. It must raise us up.

Not many bands or artists have understood this. Or even tried. There are exceptions, though: Woody Guthrie, Dylan, Monk, Coltrane, The Clash, The Specials, Bad Brains, Fugazi, Rage Against The Machine and a few others. And in France today, there is Skip The Use.

After selling 80,000 copies of their first album and completing a sellout marathon tour; after winning popular, clear, unforeseeable, undeniable success, in 2013 - a year of daily mass job losses, storms of hatred and global depression - the band from the North of France went back into the studio to record the next chapter in their story - and ours - as if returning to the battlefront. A number of the recording sessions were organized in England, in London’s legendary Sarm studios with producer Dimitri Kikovoi at the desk (Mat: “ We chose Dimitri partly because we really liked his work with Placebo, The Horrors and Ghinzu, but also because in human terms, it was a remarkable new experience, a revelation!”) assisted by sound engineer Andy Hugues. A few more sessions at ICP in
Belgium (because of renovation work at Sarm) and there it was: “Little Armageddon”! An oxymoronic title that perfectly suits a band who have always loved fusions, paradoxes and salutary contrasts - nuances in a world gnawed by unhealthy reductionism. Here, the immediate priority is to set aside bias, loose thinking and blinkers. Skip The Use hate perspective-free straight lines, pernicious shortcuts and prepackaged ideas. They aim to surprise (first themselves and then the world),breaking with convention to construct multi-layered universes where all becomes possible. Every song manages to reveal different identities and they always fall on their feet. Increasing their variety of sources, the band outline stories with twists and developments. Skip The Use are Mat Bastard (the driven singer-songwriter), Yan Stefani on guitar, Lio on keyboards, Jay on bass and Max on drums. Mat and Yan are close friends whose profiles match seamlessly. Mat likes to explore feelings, human qualities and sounds conjured out of the blue. Yan is mainly interested in riffs and
guitar lines that tattoo indelible spells. Mat adds, “I’m a real fan of guitar and we absolutely wanted to make a riff album. We wanted to riff on all the tracks. Even on the ballads and pop numbers, there’ s a riff. That’ s very important to us! I like the effectiveness of riffs and I love riffs you can sing. When I was younger, I was a fan of Iron Maiden because everyone used to sing during the guitar solos.” And listening to this unstoppable, atomic, generously combative, proud, upright album whose songs seem to radiate a will to live that towers over all the rest, we realize that it gives a vigorous finger to any kind of classification. Rock, ska, electro, pop, the USA (Mat did a lot of work from New York), London, Lille, rage, sadness, joy in laughter, punches and caresses - all are fused, combined and embraced. For better. Rarely has a French band assimilated its influences, desires and visions so quickly, strongly and well. Skip The Use spontaneously shake up the status quo. Each song is a world in itself, a brand-new adventure, persuasive in the extreme. As Mat explains, “The idea is to decide to do something together, with other people, appreciating each other’ s differences and bringing together stuff - components - that you wouldn’t immediately expect to work together. That’ s really what ‘Little Armageddon’ is about. Those two words have no business going together, but in the end, it’ s a concept that closely reflects the band and the album. It’ s a
genuine Skip The Use record. In other words, we wanted to take people somewhere they didn’t necessarily expect to go. The first single is 2Nameless World’, so everyone thinks we made a ska album. People forget we’ re Skip The Use. With us, one song is never everenough to describe our world! We wanted to surprise people with this record, doing a lot of work on the sound and taking the songs much further. Before, we couldn’t have written tracks like ‘Little Armageddon’, ‘ Nameless World’ or ‘ The Taste’ : the record is what it is because of tireless work and different new encounters. In both their words and their music, these new songs are popular - in the original sense of the word. We had to look at how people live, read books and watch movies, talk to our families and friends, and exchange thoughts. The main pressure we face is the risk that our friends may be disappointed. ”So there we have it: ‘ popular’. A wonderful word, but so misused that it has almostlost its meaning. But not for Skip The Use, who are not running an election campaign or trying to win a game show. They want to exchange - give and take.They want to hold out a hand and live
while there is still time.They want to exemplify. All through the twelve songs (not to mention the bonus tracks), we hear formidably powerful riffs, bass lines that sputter and then begin to breathe fire, different voices (Mat has used multiple angles and the result is impressive!), a children’ s choir, Johnny Cash, Jay-Z, Terry Hall, The Clash, grunge, distortion and strings, desert rock and disco-funk, pop (true pop, the kind that buoys us up) and voracious amps, peaks and troughs, abandoned kids and unemployed workers, Roma and first times,women and men, tears held back, admirable courage - and laughter, too, of course. Skip The Use know that life is made up of all these things, that suppressing your emotions is cheating.As we know, second albums are always difficult. But
rather than sticking to the tried and trusted, and remaking their successful first album, the band decided to move on, forge ahead at any cost, in order to progress and continue to exist. “Second To None”is a Yankee snake with a groove that hits down to the bone - universal rock, an unbound anthem. “30 Years” is a Molotov cocktail flung into the face of certainties. “Nameless World”starts out like A Clockwork Orange before plunging into heady ska (Skip The Use have a gift for making hits that enhance the soundtracks of our lives) with a startling post-punk chorus. “The Taste”is a hybrid, too, beginning gently before ending on the crest of a gigantic wave - impressive and tanked up on emotion. “Birds Are Born To Fly”raises the flag of youth, a youth that can never be silenced. Here again, Skip The Use bring people together - but not heavy-handedly. “The Wrong Man”stands defiant - Joe Strummer must be cheering from wherever he is. “The Story Of Gods And Men”begins with some very 80s keyboards only to rend the veil of the synth-pop temple and boost our belief in humanity. “Little Armageddon”explores paternity over an incisive riff. It is caustic indeed - Mat may never have howled so wildly. “She’ s Gone”, a story of girlfriends fading into time, reawakens the spirit of the 90s. “Etre Heureux”(Being Happy) with its French lyrics and almost glacial acoustic guitar may be one of the most beautiful Gallic ballads ever written. Strings swell and we find ourselves plunged into the heart of melancholy and the kind of fear that marks faces and hearts. Mat sings unmasked, fearlessly, and the result is rare, precious and moving. “Lust For You”will pack the dance floors and purge minds - another hit! Finally, certain inits power, “We Are Bastards”(the final track of this alien record) reminds us that Mat and the others are natives of the punk world, where for fifteen years they honed their blades in a band called Carving (there is actually an album on the way). Above all, the song announces that music should only ever be a cry, a flash, a beat - which is a patent truth. Skip The Use can pump up the sonic distortion in peace: the future is theirs. As Mat concludes, “Skip The Use don’ t do charm. The cool thing is what we do together. All of us” Very True.



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