Inhabitants II tick all of the packing containers for a correct prog-rock act. They’ll simply fill a complete album facet with a single monitor. Their drummer can be their lead singer. The guitarist and bassist double as synth gamers. They usually hail from Quebec, traditionally the proggiest of all Canadian provinces. However approached from a unique vantage, the Montreal trio can be a prototypical garage-rock band, fueled by maniacal power, blistering fuzz, and a perception in uncooked energy over precision. Their collision of prog extra and punk perspective made them an ideal match for John Dwyer’s Fort Face label, which launched Inhabitants II’s first correct album, À la Ô Terre, in 2020. However like Ty Segall and King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard earlier than them, Inhabitants II used their early Fort Face connection as a springboard to launch themselves on their very own unpredictable trajectory.
With their third album, Maintenant Jamais, Inhabitants II confront an existential quandary: Are you continue to a prog band if all of your songs are underneath 5 minutes? “We tried to make our songs catchier,” drummer-vocalist Pierre-Luc Gratton not too long ago admitted to Montreal’s Le Devoir. “For this album, we questioned the way to play these unusual notes with out sounding like we spend our lives on Quebec-prog dialogue boards.” However the place ’70s forebears like Pink Floyd and Rush shrewdly compartmentalized their multi-sectional suites and radio-friendly singles, Inhabitants II enjoyment of blurring the road between suave ambition and untamed abandon. Produced with Marie Davidson affiliate Dominic Vanchesteing, Maintenant Jamais foregrounds sharper melodies, lusher textures, and tighter grooves, however retains the fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants philosophy that guided the band’s earlier voyages to the guts of the solar.
For Inhabitants II, a pop hook is simply that: a pointy implement they’ll use to pull you wherever they wish to go. The place Gratton as soon as needed to wail wildly over his band’s interstellar overdrive, Maintenant Jamais sees him comfortably settle into the Lennon-esque elocution favored by the likes of post-Manipulator Ty Segall and pre-Currents Kevin Parker. (The lysergic riffs and cascading momentum of “homme étoilé” present a very potent flashback of a time when Tame Impala have been primarily a Dungen tribute act.) However Inhabitants II aren’t as focused on crafting pop songs as constructing Trojan horses: The breathy melody and funky Virgin Suicides ambiance of “Prévisions” lure you unsuspectingly right into a stormy psychedelic squall courtesy of guitarist Tristan Lacombe, whereas “Mariano (Jamais je ne t’oublierai)” counters its hip-shaking synth-funk beat with skull-splitting blasts of wah-wah and keyboard drone that overtake the music like a white splotch devouring a melting movie strip.
