The Nuc plus ultra: young French rockers and veterans The Who

We were able to taste the songs of this young French trio on two promising albums, released in 2017 and 2019. With Veil, a new record just released, the musicians are reaching a milestone. Begun at the start of confinement, the writing of the record took advantage of this latency time: the songs on this album are extremely well written. Lysistrata have a sense of rock composition, riff and melody, and do not hesitate to evolve in a pop format which in no way calls into question their status as liberated indie rockers. The great novelty of this latest disc is the contribution of an external director in the person of New Yorker Ben Greenberg, collaborator of Metz, Beach Fossils and Show Me The Body. Under his leadership, Ben, Théo and Max allowed themselves greater audacity. We are often impressed by the production of the album, which evokes the heyday of powerful and disheveled rock while being more accessible. Rather than going against the tide of catchy choruses, the trio now seems to welcome them with open arms. Originally from Saintes (Charente Maritime), these three childhood friends sometimes tended to hide their melodies behind guitar barbed wire. Festival darlings for several seasons, the musicians of Lysistrata should reach an even wider audience with this very successful album.

This former baseball stadium located in Queen, New York, and now demolished, entered musical history for having hosted a memorable Beatles concert in 1965. Seventeen years later, a another legendary English group performed there: The Who. Barely four years after the sudden death of drummer Keith Moon, the group was not at the top of its form. The album It's Hard, released a few months earlier, would become their last record before their return to the studio in 2007. However, this date, for which the group The Clash had played as the opening act, would prove to be a good concert for London training. Alternating new songs and rarities, the original trio (Roger Daltrey, vocals, Pete Townshend, guitar and John Entwistle, bass), augmented by drummer Kenny Jones, would shake the New York audience like never before. Power, efficiency, the Who proved that they were still among the best live groups from the 1960s. They had to stop playing a few weeks later, only to return to the stage seven long years later, in 1989, for the 20 years of the rock opera Tommy. They haven’t stopped since!