Waiting for a debut album from a band whose first singles/EPs you fell hopelessly in love with can be a tricky, even disappointing thing — it's like having a wonderfully dedicated lover but all magic disappearing when you finally go steady, you know? However, every once in a while you get it right and everything is as perfect as you dreamed it would be. It even feels like witchcraft. That's the case with Rendez Vous's much anticipated debut full length Superior State, the band's first proper LP that follows 2016 EP Distance. Currently shaping up to be this country's next great musical export after the likes of La Femme and Christine & the Queens, theirs is an uncanny coldwave sound that simultaneously throws us back to those golden postpunk years without ever completely removing its foot from the here and now. Yes, the now quintet (they have added Guillaume Rotter on drums since I saw them live for Distance's release party at Les Bains) does drink from that perfectly mixed cocktail distilled from Jeunes Gens Modernes and French Touch in equal measure, but the sonic appropriation they make of the Mancunian industrial disenchantment finds its maximal expression throughout the unspoken violence of Francis Mallari's voice, which is able to transmit the rawness of a consented slap in the face.
https://rendezvousrendezvous.bandcamp.com/album/superior-state
