Since 1999, Stéphane Paut (aka Neige) has been composing sunny, shoegazing post-black metal under the Alcest moniker. Alcest's third LP, Les Voyages de l'Âme, feels like his ultimate statement on this particular approach. Paut, who first made his mark playing purer black metal, has been at Alcest longer than he contributed to the eccentric, raw, politically tricky black-metal crew Peste Noire. During Alcest's run, his dynamic genre-meshing post-punk black-metal quartet Amesoeurs came and went. While he'll likely continue working with German musician Herbst on the blackened post-rock band Lantlôs, he's not the one piloting that ship (ditto Forgotten Woods). That, and Old Silver Key, his collaboration with members of Drudkh, felt like a half-baked one-off. All to say, despite the insane list of associations and circles affixed to his name, the multi-tasking French multi-instrumentalist has been increasingly focused on this one higher profile, very personal project.
The attention he's given Alcest has given him time to hone (and ramp up) the signature sound. Instead of shifting things, or looking for ways to expand the aesthetic, he's been trying to perfect something very specific. When I spoke to Neige about Alcest in 2007, he said the concept for the band was connected to "visions" he had as a child of "an indescribably beautiful place where everything-- trees, glades, and brooks-- produces a pearly light and where a faraway and celestial music floats in the air like a perfume." The songs recorded under the Alcest name are "the musical testimony of these experiences." It's a fairy or dream land that he's trying to recreate sonically, and each record apparently clarifies and better maps something that's been in his head for a long time. So, while the dogged reliance on a particular formula is essential to the project, it's problematic if you're looking for variation.
It shouldn't be a surprise that Les Voyages, translated "The Journeys of the Soul," is the most accomplished Alcest offering. That's the way things have been going for a while. (Per usual, Paut handles everything but the drums, again tackled again by ex-Amesoeurs/Peste Noire player Winterhalter of Les Discrets, and ex-Alcest/Amesoeurs guitarist Fursy Teyssier, also of Les Discrets, did the artwork.) Part of Alcest's charm, though, has been the project's imperfections: The haze of the 2005 two-song, Charles Baudelaire-cribbing debut Le Secret-- its abrupt shifts between nature recordings, clean dream-pop acoustics, and raw black metal-- was transfixing and, despite all the beauty, strange.
Seven years later he's clarified and crystallized that approach, sure, and lost something in that translation. (It's hard to go back into the shadows once you've left them.) In one sense, it is a return to form. 2010's Écailles de Lune took on a darker cast. It was a fine record, but Alcest sound best when he's chasing after sunspots. You do get plenty of that here, along with the usual smeary French singing and pretty shoegaze sentimentality. The standout moment, I think, is the transition from the more frantic "Beings of Light"-- a soaring, angelic blur that opens with a kind of airy choir-- to the almost eight-minute "Faiseurs de Mondes", a track that makes use of the group's heavier tendencies (plenty of black-metal howls) alongside a catchier pop riff and a very dense melodicism. In "Beings of Light", it's unclear if he's saying anything or just holding notes, and it doesn't really matter.
When Alcest made their New York City premiere a couple of years ago-- a show I helped organize-- Paut had lost his voice, so he handed over his vocal duties to someone else in the band, touring guitarist Zero. Paut, in turn, stood in the background. It felt natural to me; he's not really a frontman. Here, when everything's as clear as it is on Les Voyages de l'Âme, he feels almost too exposed, and the big climaxes he's reaching for don't arrive. There's no denying the beauty, but it feels weirdly muted-- or perhaps just unsurprising. Paut doesn't write pop songs memorable enough to exist entirely as pop, and at this point enough people are blending black metal with a variety of softer genres that those explosions don't send shivers like they did in the past. Surprise is essential to his plan. Now, instead of straddling and bridging two genres in unique ways, it feels as if he's treading water in both.
