French band Pulcinella is little known over here, but the release of their third album Bestiole (meaning nothing more ribald than “tiny creatures”, apparently), coincides with a brief UK tour, and is looking like the beginnings of a breakthrough. A quartet of sax, accordion, percussion and bass, with an exotic array of guest instruments, they’re self-consciously experimental, but melodic and humorous with it. Their swirling sound-world of whimsical, gothic circus noir draws on jazz, tango and alt rock, but balances the mixture with feisty originality in independent territory in between.
The opening track, which can be loosely translated as “Park in the alleyway, you’re pissing everyone off” has Florian Demonsant’s accordion haring manically up and down the scales of Ferdinand Doumerc’s alto saxophone, the pert, piping sounds of both instruments combining in a kind of spangled, zesty maze of soured melody. Thrusting, balladic tunes emerge from several tracks, but they’re made to pay their dues. In “Christiania”, a wafting sax melody (not unlike Polar Bear’s “The King of Aberdeen”, for example) floats away from the neurotic pattering drums, but only after wrestling with the whining accordion.
The theme of unusual instrumental combinations continues throughout. "Sur le pavé la lune" (“The moon on the cobblestone”) balances trombone and mandolin (played by guest musicians Daniel Casimir and Patrick Vaillant respectively) in a bittersweet meditation, while “Morphée” blends Doumerc’s ethereal metallophone with the sleepiest soft tones of sax and bass. The small beasts of the title appear in several tracks, including the “ambitious mosquito” and the penultimate “Tarantelle”, the folk dance supposedly inspired by a spider bite. Pulcinella balance their tone with deceptive skill, achieving both humour and oddity without ever sounding twee (for French accordionists, there’s the ever-present peril of sounding like the soundtrack to Amélie). This is an idiosyncratic take on Frenchness, but it deserves to be heard far beyond those borders.