"11": New album from the French proggers Lazuli

         It doesn't seem that long ago that Lazuli were the intriguing new French kids on the prog block, bringing their lush and often magical brand of songwriting to a wider audience beyond the borders of their homeland. Now they're on their 11th album — hence the title.

This is the product of dashed hopes and optimism tempered by experience — like many around the world, Lazuli founder member and main songwriter Dominique Leonetti sought positives from the pandemic. He was encouraged by the way that lower levels of human activity allowed nature to seemingly rejuvenate and by the opportunities afforded by lockdowns prompting us perhaps to change how we live and interact with each other and the planet. However, coming out the other side, he became disillusioned with humanity simply reverting to ‘business as usual'. The resulting album speaks perhaps more of sadness, shadow and doubt than Lazuli’s previous output, but with an enduring optimism shining through the gloom. Yin and yang, shadows and light.

Musically, 11 is a recapitulation of what the band do best — enchanting and beautifully crafted vocal melodies that spark earworms for days, like the strangely understated opener Sillonner Des Oceans De Vinyles, Triste Carnaval and Lagune Grise, married to often sumptuous arrangements that draw on symphonic prog, European folk and warm ambience.

Musical points of reference here would have to include the hints of Supertramp building to a cracking, heroic guitar solo flying high and far in Le Pleureur Sous La Pluie and the jaunty folk-rock meets anthemic power-pop of Egoine. There are also strains of Trick.../Wind And Wuthenng-era Genesis about the album as a whole — not that it sounds like them, but there's that juxtaposition of melancholy whimsey and stirring themes, and in how it "feels” — listen especially to Triste Carnaval and closer Le Grand Vide.

The dualities pervading the album are perfectly framed in the pairing of the tracks Les Mots Desuets and La Betaillere, with the former an aching, plaintive lament for our inability to articulate what we often need to say set against a single picked acoustic guitar, and the latter a heavy, dark, highly effective commentary on humanity's wholesale slaughter of animals, accompanied by the rumble of timpani and a relentless rhythm section lope.

While 11 is a fine ensemble album with everyone, including new recruit Arnaud Beyney on guitar, contributing potent yet sensitive parts, it does feel very much like a highly personal, even cathartic, statement from Dominique Leonetti. An album that simply had to be made? It sounds like it.