Adrift

No matter how much we like to see Lyenn play bass with Mark Lanegan or Dans Dans, it was about time he let us in again on the songs that have been lurking inside him all these years. And finally we can join Adrift and follow his flow. The album was recorded completely live in Iceland, again with Lyenn’s faithful companion Shazaad Ismaily. It contains some of the timid singer-songwriter, a multilingual Jeff Buckley on piano or Nick Drake on bouzouki. Miniature landscapes loom out of the fog, reminiscent of late Talk Talk or Mark Hollis' solo work. His pop music is refined like David Sylvian's, even if it is just two notes sometimes. ‘Give In' could be an idea of Radiohead – but the moment Lyenn sees this through, he cuts it off. ‘Staggering Heights' is exactly what the title says, dizzying. And the 8 conjuring minutes of 'Hissing Fire' should have been 80, a mantra. Adrift comes straight out of the life of Fred Lyenn Jacques. He is a searcher, never and always sure of himself. A basso continuo with a falsetto. He improvises a path where there is none. Picking up instruments along the way and following his intuition. He surrenders himself to the music and passes it on to us, with a lot of patience and fortune in the form of a record. Like Adrift, and nothing else.