{"id":199079,"date":"2025-11-25T09:16:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T09:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/199079\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T09:16:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T09:16:09","slug":"helene-barbier-panorama-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/199079\/","title":{"rendered":"He\u0301le\u0300ne Barbier: Panorama Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ask me for my desert island top five songs that feature vocals from real dogs and I\u2019d probably mention Jane’s Addiction<\/a>\u2019s \u201cBeen Caught Stealing,\u201d Mitski<\/a>\u2019s \u201cI\u2019m Your Man,\u201d Beach Boys<\/a>\u2019 \u201cCaroline, No,\u201d maybe Fiona Apple<\/a>\u2019s \u201cFetch the Bolt Cutters.\u201d In most cases, the barking adds a touch of ambient v\u00e9rit\u00e9 or, in Mitski\u2019s case, impending doom: \u201cI\u2019ll meet judgment by the hounds,\u201d she sings, and the hounds in question start yapping hungrily around the edges, threatening more than judgment. Now, there\u2019s a new contender: \u201cPlastique Couch,\u201d the centerpiece of Panorama, the third solo album from singer and bassist H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Barbier. It\u2019s a woozily entrancing kiss-off where everything sounds slightly askew, as though it were soundtracking a dream sequence in a Michel Gondry film. Wacky back-up vocals dart in and out, different after each chorus, and in the final iteration, they\u2019re supplied by Barbier\u2019s fluffy mountain dog<\/a>, Toody, in a series of gruff barks. But Toody doesn\u2019t sound like she\u2019s interrupting the session or freaking out at a delivery truck. She sounds like she\u2019s locked into the groove.<\/p>\n

That perpetual nonchalance is key to Barbier\u2019s wigged-out appeal. Her lyrics, though cryptic, often evoke ruptured relationships and existential malaise. But across this oddly addictive album of laconic and playful art-punk, she never loses her cool. \u201cPour toi, le temps n\u2019a rien arrang\u00e9,\u201d she purs on \u201cDans l\u2019os\u201d\u2014that is, \u201cFor you, time hasn\u2019t fixed anything\u201d\u2014but she doesn\u2019t sound especially rattled. \u201cWater,\u201d the most conventional song here, tempers its icy contempt (\u201cWhen you die, I won\u2019t smile,\u201d the singer croons) with chiming guitars that resemble Tom Verlaine<\/a> at his most expressionistic. The synth-splattered \u201cMilquetoast\u201d is a deceptively jovial tune about being bored and wanting to go home. Barbier chants the two-syllable title over and over like it\u2019s a new delicacy: \u201cMilk! Toast, toast.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ask me for my desert island top five songs that feature vocals from real dogs and I\u2019d probably…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":199080,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[264],"tags":[12327,18,117,19,17,337,806],"class_list":{"0":"post-199079","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-albums","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-music","14":"tag-web"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115609585893946199","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199079\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}