Well, I totally adore it when I fall in love with a sleeve design yet also rabidly hanker for the music within too! See, that is what has happened on indulging in the third airing of this second long player from Lio and Marie Limiñana (who hail from the medieval commune/town of Perpignan in Southern-most France). How to describe this music? Shimmering bare-bones Garage rock with gorgeous sultry vocals and heavy ukulele indulgence, also it sometimes comes over kind of like some weird gothic bluegrass spliced with rattly bar-room psychedelia completed by a huge cap-doffing session round The Velvet Underground’s squat.
I could listen to these excellent, charming simply-constructed songs for hours, I had no idea Liminanas had such a primal twinkle in their eye! Because of the rudimentary tub-thumping, tambourine, shambling guitar and cute ukulele it gets high marks but the sensual, breathy French female vocals on the majority of tracks just slay me every time (but not forgetting Lio whose archly poised voice is the perfect male foil). So if you love Stereolab, Family Fodder, Freschard or, hell, anything French with girls singing then you gotta get ‘Crystal Anis’ dropped in your basket right away. If you also happen to dig rustic garage rock and brittle melodic ‘60s folk-pop then you’ll be in seventh heaven, for this is merde chaud!!
