ABOUT US
Mark Bullivant :: drums
Gilbert Disloquez :: bass
Bryan Sullivan :: voice, percussions, keys
Riaz Tejani :: lead voice, guitar, wordsThe French Semester is still modernist: song comes before sound and sentiment before irony. They’re all there. Cardinal rules were heeded, then misplaced. Melodies equipped with hooks, rusty ones, then delivered in their imperfection. Attach them to your body and save them for later: shakey melodies for shaking bodies—they’ll come in handy.
The band was in and of the world. India, Asia, Africa, Europe, and S. America. Where hearts break and mend over basic elements. Water, heat, electricity, and protein. They felt compelled to always remind you, like children in the morning. Pop songs of gestalt, flights of fancy over nationalism, ecology, decolonization, and Empire. Call it the marriage of rolling backbeat and third world nostalgia. The sound of classic roots under rickshaw wheels. Scratchy phonorecords and wet laundry beaten on the rocks.
Influences: Guided By Voices, the Byrds, Big Star, Daniel Johnston, the Who, Love, Ride, the Sebadoh, Neutral Milk Hotel, the Hollies, Butterglory, the Buffalo Springfield, the Olivia Tremor Control, the Smiths, Indienella, Tim Buckley, the Monkees, the Velveteen UnderRabbit, the Clash, the Stone Poneys, Wilco, the Specials, Built to Spill, Miles Davis, Pavement, Tobin Sprout, the Small Faces, the Cure, Slowdive, the Flaming Lips, Edward Said, Franz Fanon, Durkheim and Bourdieu.
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© 2008 The French Semester.
All Rights Reserved. Site design by Gil Disloquez.
