Plastiscines: 'About Love'

Like their French peers The Teenagers, who seemed to be cocking a continental snook at everything they wrote songs about, it is difficult to know where Plastiscines are looking on this short but punchy album.

Is the name a knowing reference to the superficiality of pop rock? Is the band really a post graduate project about the response of the music industry to girl groups?

The members are simultaneously nauseatingly young and sufficiently knowing to have produced an album that dispenses with anything even approaching indulgence or pretension. The style is a carefully worked out pop rock song form riddled with impenetrable humour; inherited directly from The Hives. The biggest risk lies in the disposability of the tracks and the clear limits that are set by being, almost defiantly, a traditional rock four piece.

Some songs here expand the range of the form more than others; take the single 'Bitch', a track that takes the quiet-quiet-loud formula and lays it onto a comedic apologia for being young, assertive and obsessed with the pursuit of self. “I’m a bitch when I brush my teeth” sings Katty Besnard in a voice that tells you how much fun it is and how little she cares. The song is ultimately dispensable, bursting into fullness easily and cheaply - it is fun while it lasts but unlikely to have you thinking about it once finished.

This is what this album is all about, and the group can be credited for playing to their strengths. The originality of their sound varies; 'Time To Leave' sounds like an anodyne tribute to The Cure and 'Friends To Lovers' is dangerously close to the kind of jaunty pop-rock you could well do without. Instead, note the power immanent in 'I Could Rob You', 'Barcelona' and 'You’re No Good', which are variously about being indifferent, self reliance and being sufficiently relaxed to have fun.

The album’s most earnest moment, 'I Am Down', is also its longest. An acoustic guitar and piano ballad that is nearly schmaltzy but ends up being saved by the parsimony of its lyric (“I am down tonight, because of you” is as straightforward a proclamation of romance as one could hope for). Don’t expect to be chilled by the emotional intimacy; do expect it to turn up on whatever TV teen show happens to be trying to depict heartbreak and turmoil.

There are only three songs in French here, which is a shame as it is a language that can give rock songs a pleasingly different aspect; more of it here would have broken up the record and might have made the assault of endless power chords more palatable. 'Camera' and 'Pas Avec Toi' are as muscular as any of the other songs on the album, with the latter taking on the tempo of thrash. 'Coney Island' is a confident and surprising finish, expanding outwards into a singable yet wispy thing that rolls its shoulders and stomps. It might be the best song on the record and the promise of more to come.



Released on 15th February 2010 by Nylon Music.

Written by Huw Green.