At the end of 2016, Tequila Sunrise was a rather sentient title: Metro Verlaine certainly affirmed an explicit filiation with the cold-wave / post-punk axis (like everyone today, by the way), but the band, like Shark Chagrin, never gave the impression to pick in its gothic youth. On the contrary: too mature to indulge in the sin of reverence, Metro Verlaine advanced with certainty, affirmation, and talent. Initially destined for 2017, Cut-Up, the first album as feared as expected, required a much longer period of work than expected. One understands why: beyond a necessity to confirm the hopes placed in Tequila Sunrise, the formation of Evreux took the time to sharpen its universe, to think about a Lp which would not be judged in immediacy but which would survive the years. Convincing result: personal, superbly produced by Charles Rowell, in a claimed French (without poetry or bullshit, without pomp or pretty sentences), Cut-Up would deserve a much more explicit hype - for once than a first French album, even under influence, brings freshness and truth. No question of bothering Metro Verlaine on the question of pastism (a title is entitled Richard Hell - that's clear?). For here, teenage fantasies are sufficiently ingested for the adult stage to succeed in exploiting them with relevance, in a musical need that has nothing to do with blissful allegiance. I'll die in Manchester", planned the single avant-coureur Manchester : the hypothesis supplants the affirmation, the mortuary daydream (or sip of spleen) claims nothing but the possibility of. And we can see what differentiates today's clever little ones from good musicians: the former sing a present they don't know but they pretend to live (egocentric frustration), the latter envisage the future with a romanticism now worried because inappropriate at the time. Metro Verlaine, and that's also why Cut-Up is such a good record, belongs, of course, to the second category. The one of the freaks.
