A PERFECT CIRCLE: Eat The Elephant (ALTERNATIVE ROCK): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

What a beautiful album! "A Perfect Union Of Contrary Things", the title of Maynard James Keenan's biography published in 2016, is almost enough to describe A Perfect Circle's new opus. Because that's what it's all about. "Eat The Elephant" is the perfect union of opposing and heterogeneous music that attracts each other like magnets to form a work in perpetual motion, more surprising with each listening. Which band is able to reinvent itself with such freedom? Which artists are able to marry opposites with so much inspiration?

Oh of course, the wait has been long, far too long. Fourteen years since "Emotive", fifteen years since the masterpiece "Thirteen Step". The years have passed. Everyone was busy, Billy Howerdel with Ashes Divide and Maynard with Puscifer, while devoting themselves to their vineyards in Arizona and making their fans languish who can no longer wait for the next Tool album.

But it was once again by surprising his world that the enigmatic misanthropist concentrated on a new album by A Perfect Circle. Tool will wait a little longer. It must be said that it was served on a platter by Billy Howerdel who never stopped composing. Always in search of new sounds, the guitarist thus proposed new tracks to Maynard James Keenan, which he shaped in his image, that of a gifted and elusive artist, cultivated and unpredictable, brilliant and charismatic. These are all qualifiers that also define "Eat The Elephant".

However, it is likely that this opus will initially be unloved, even misunderstood. The time of the sophisticated alternative metal of "Mer De Noms" is long gone. "Eat The Elephant" is a melodic cold wave album whose compositional qualities and complex harmonic structures are only revealed after several listenings. Enthusiastic and addictive, the album continues the work begun with "Thirteen Step" and its atmospheric atmospheres but has more asperities and character, reinforcing the pop side of the combo's music by giving the premiere to the piano rather than the guitar on many compositions.

The tone was set at the beginning of the album with the title "Eat The Elephant". Just a piano, a drum kit and Maynard's voice, which has probably never sung so well before. The result is a festival of great songs, a synthpop musical kaleidoscope tinged with electro strangely reminiscent of Depeche Mode ('The Doomed','Talk Talk','Hourglass'), progressive pop (Disillusioned), atmospheric Anathemian rock ('Contrarian','Feathers') and pop rock with 'So Long And Thanks For All The Fish' which has all the power of a hit. Like an impressionist painter, the band spreads colourful harmonic colours on its musical canvas to create a heterogeneous and fascinating work of controlled madness and apparent wisdom, while perfectly combining the rock intensity of the guitars ('By Down The River','Delicious') and the melancholy of the keyboards ('DLB').

Full-bodied, inspired and terribly modern, "Eat The Elephant" is a jewel of precision and writing that confirms the uniqueness of A Perfect Circle and place it, like its cousin Tool, in its position as a band definitely apart on the world rock scene. What a beautiful album! - Official website

A PERFECT CIRCLE

EAT THE ELEPHANT

BMG

ALTERNATIVE ROCK