Paganella: Is "Bubble-Crunch" Even A Genre?

Three things in combination here: super-bright and energetic vocals I can't really follow because my French is as rusty as a big chunk of rusty stuff; a driving background of buzz-saw guitarwork that really really gets my body hopping; just the right amount of layering and depth to make the whole thing feel nice and thick. The band behind the music is Paganella. And the music is pretty damn good.

Yes, they're another French act - leave me alone, I manage to get myself on a Francophilic kick now and then.

This trio - made up of Delphine Audevard, Sylvain Sentenach, and Nicolas Arnaudet - caught me in the midst of aimless surfing and sucked me in with their unique sound. I don't know what they call their style, but to me it is so bubbly and crunchy that I'm stuck on "bubble-crunch" as a name for what I'm hearing. What else to say? Not much, I'm going back to bouncing in the darkness.

Paganella: Is "Bubble-Crunch" Even A Genre?

How should I describe the music of Gaspard LaNuit? There are occasional elements of countrified Americana twang here and there. Smooth cohesive steady rhythms and laidback flow - except when things turn suddenly cruncha-chunky and dissonant and filtered. It is what it is. Which is to say - it seems to know what it's trying to be.

And for the most part, I think that it's trying to be its own thing - an end which it achieves except for those times when it feels like things have taken a hard right-hand turn into derivations a la Serge Gainsbourg. Not that I mind a little of that sort of thing. In fact, when LaNuit is nodding toward the elder musician's style, I feel it works a bit better than the original. Or at least, it's less overtly sleazy and boozed-up sexual. It has a smoother voice of seduction and a more respectable swagger.