Frustration – Our Decisions - LP

Frustration – Our Decisions

Label:    Born Bad Records – BB172
Format:    Vinyl, LP, Album
Country:    France
Released:    Mar 29, 2024
Genre:    Rock
Style:    Post-Punk

Frustration is back, increasingly misrepresenting itself. We know where it's going from the very first bars, and this is precisely what we were hoping for. The relative classicism of this sixth album is driven by an initial desire that is sufficiently complex that its expression is never a repetition. Frustration doesn't teach music history, but that doesn't mean they don't know where they come from. The Born Bad stalwarts bear the banner of bastard Postpunk. For snobs who roll on the floor when English is sung on the wrong side of the Channel, two tracks in French, "Omerta" and "Consumés", remind us that Fabrice Gilbert sings in an interlanguage that has kept the best of both idioms. It's the perfect way to savor his acid, no-holds-barred rants, which cut a swath through this "generation of apathetic truffles / fantasizing about assholes full of money". More so, Anne, from the Rouen combo Hammershoi, sings in German, on "Vorbei", a rare moment of pause in this very intense record, which sound is less radically Cold wave as predeccessor So Cold Streams. The cardio-paced drums of "Catching Your Eye" recall the joyful drone of "Shades from the past", an instrumental from their first album, "Secular Prayer", which closes the album, confirms that Frustration are as much in the Ian Curtis family as they are in the Ian Dury family: it takes great care not to take themselves too seriously with such success.