Bleep

Charlène Darling is the playful vehicle of Charlotte Kouklia and her band, who riff on West Europe’s forty plus years of catchy, shiny pop and rock while simultaneously ripping up all of the blueprints. La Porte is their first album for Disciples, switching between minimalist and motorik with electrified performances. Banjo and guitars twang with Atlantean weight on ‘Abril Terra’, alongside growls, sparse vocal phrases, and icy shards of percussion. Meanwhile, the sole English track ‘Out at sea’ is a structural vortex of piquant breakdowns and post-punk detours, “caught in a wave” of distortion, dissonance, and displacement.