Caravan Palace - "Gangbusters Melody Club"
For those who like swingin' bops
Caravan Palace is one of those bands that just do their own thing. They’re a French Electroswing band, and they’ve got a solid cult hit in “Lone Digger”,1 the second single from 2015’s <|°_°|>,2 which has steadily gained popularity since its release and was even used in the soundtrack for Disney’s Strange World. Yet for all the energy and mainstream appeal that “Lone Digger” proves, Caravan Palace absolutely refuses to commit to a singular approach or style. Their albums are generally kind of all over the place — while Electroswing remains the anchor point, they sometimes cut out all of the electronic influence and delve more into Neo-Swing and Jazz territory with songs fit for 40s-era lounges; or they dial up the electronic elements and lean into House stylings.
The band is largely whimsical and unpredictable, which is both refreshing and infuriating. They keep hitting on things that I want to hear more of, and then they just kind of leave it be; they don’t have anything resembling an established “sound”.
Though, it’s possible that Gangbusters Melody Club has changed that.
I don’t want to try to guarantee anything in regards to their future albums, as this sort of avant garde counter-culture mentality is hard-coded into just about everything they do. I mean, the band’s formation happened because its members were recruited to support a silent adult film in the mid-aughts, and, as indicated above, they really don’t care to define themselves for anybody else’s convenience. Hell, I can’t even suggest that there will be another album after this one — Gangbusters Melody Club is only their fifth album in 16 years, and it comes five years after their last one.
Still, this album is more stylistically cohesive than any of their previous outings by quite a lot. That tighter focus also includes poppier elements which make the songs more consistently fit the expectations of the average listener. That isn’t a bad thing; they aren’t sacrificing their artistic integrity in any way. If anything, they’ve only become more creative in finding ways to incorporate these old-timey elements and sounds into songs which still somehow sound new and modern and yet utterly distinct from anything else you’ll find in popular media.
So on one side of this album’s range, you have songs like “Mirrors” and “Raccoons”, which channel the same energy and vibes as “Lone Digger”; on the other, there are songs like “Spirits” and the mostly-instrumental “Portobello”, which lean more into the older sounds. And I can’t not mention "Fool”, which is also mostly instrumental, and the only vocals are autotuned samples of Ella Washington from “Doing the Best I Can”.
Most of the tracks on the album are just flat-out bops. There isn’t a bad song here. The only one that might slip into “meh” territory, personally, is “Portobello”, and that’s really just on days when that isn’t the vibe you want.
Gangbusters Melody Club is pretty well everything I was hoping for in the next Caravan Palace album. I love it.
Rating: Blue
The link here leads to Spotify. Originally, I linked the official music video, which ends with a bloody gang-fight-turned-free-for-all in a members-only strip club. I figured it might be best to ensure that the link to the video had a guaranteed warning, though, so I flipped them. I recommend not watching this one with kids or coworkers around.
It’s well (if cheaply) animated, but not the best music video, as it really doesn’t match the energy of the song.
Yes, that is the album’s title. It is verbally spoken as “Robot Face”.