Yallah Mickey Mouse

Cyril Yeterian (better known as the accordion playing frontman for Cajun blues band Mama Rosin) and fellow Genevan avant-garde experimentalist Cyril Bondi grandly style themselves as a latter-day ‘Helvet Underground’. The punning self­flattery is not totally unwarranted, however, as this excellent sophomore album proves. Ten cleverly crafted, genre-bending tracks blur the lines between electronica, psychedelia and foot-thumping Middle Eastern post-punk. Singing mainly in French and the odd bit of Lebanese-dialect Arabic for authenticity (or maybe to justify the use of the word yallah in the title), there’s a frenetic urgency to ‘Les Gens’, while the title-track brings to mind 80s American art-pop merchants Sparks, which is no bad thing at all. The sheer eclecticism of this collection demands repeated and attentive listening. A less charitable reviewer might label ‘Le Grisou’ and ‘X-Crise’ as filler and these two are probably best forgotten, but ‘President’ is outstanding and overall this is promising underground, artsy stuff from a band worth keeping a careful eye on.