This kind of stuff makes me so happy. Even if they're technically an emo band, Suis La Lune's most recent EP feels anything but depressing for me. The four songs here are bursting with a passionate but playful kind of energy that makes me smile. There is a kind of bittersweet quality to them, sure, but it's that kind of nice bittersweet feeling you get when reminiscing about good times - awesome shows attended, beers shared with friends, long summer holidays - and knowing that the nature of things like that is that they're going to come and go, so you need to just enjoy them while you can. At least that's what it does for me, anyway. 'With Wings of Feather and Glue' really sets the tone for this brilliantly: a lovely slow guitar intro with the sounds of birds chirping in the distance gets you in the smiles-and-sunshine mood right from the outset, until the song bursts into life, and what follows is fifteen minutes of raucous screamo that rouses and invigorates more than it laments and whines. Suis La Lune are typically associated with the Euro-screamo scene but have quite a lot in common with the guitar theatrics of US bands like Kidcrash and early Hot Cross as well as having traces of the sound that you get in continental peers like La Quiete and Raein. The real thing that needs to be said about this EP, above anything else, is that it's just so enjoyable: it's too short to ever become boring, but there are all these little moments throughout that are so satisfying. The guitar work is great - as said, it kind of traverses the current emo scene quite nicely, from the more technical fiddly stuff to the melodic post-rock-ish tendencies of a lot of the European emo groups playing right now, and the occasional bit of all-out octave tremolo picking in true Orchid style (see 'September Gave Us Awkwardness, October Gave Us Nothing'). Even if you can't understand a word the singer is screaming out, Heir is still just a great, thoroughly enjoyable, feelgood screamo record (I don't know if I'm ever going to use the words "feelgood" and "screamo" next to each other again, but there we go). Put this on when you're down in the dumps, then thank me later.
Suis La Lune - Heir
