Underwater City (LP) - Florent C. (Pop) For this week’s album review, we welcome Florent C. to the blog with his 11-track LP “Underwater City.” While a handful of tracks scream radioplay, overall the work is an immersive, atmospheric experience, painting beautiful landscapes both physical and emotional, pulled together by a thread of a journey through melancholy to self confidence. But before we dissect the tracks, first a bit about our artist.
Belgian artist Florent C. is here to create his own universe. A storyteller at heart, Florence C. blends urban energy, cinematic moods and alternative pop influences to create music compositions he hopes will create a connection with his listeners. He views each project as its own world to dive into and explore. Preceded by this year’s “Duality”, “Cold Intentions” and “Da Lerk’Z”, on “Underwater City”, Florent C. mixes dark pop textures and hypnotic rhythms and imbues them with raw storytelling, hoping to create a unique immersive journey that balances chaos and serenity.
The album opens with “Perfect Disaster”, beginning the project on what feels to be a somber note from the descending chords and sorrowful ambience. Passing between male and female vocalists, we get a song about regret over letting someone slip away, having not appreciated them when they had the chance. It’s a heavy track that sets the tone for the project.
The melancholy continues on “Phonetic Dreams”, which harkens back to the dark dance floor tracks of the early 00s, ultimately guiding us into the title track, “Underwater City”. Both do exactly what Florent C. strives for—creating picturesque worlds with sound. The latter especially paints a vivid atmosphere, imbued with feelings of longing and loss. Both tracks feel very much like exploratory journeys on alien worlds.
Florent C.’s lyrical prowess is on full display on “He Never Talked”, where he paints not a landscape but the contours of a fraught relationship. Giving us shades of Dido, this track to us feels like the most single friendly of the outing so far.
We then get two tracks that feel like character studies. “Guinea Pig” plunges us back into darkness with a spooky ode to a lover who toys with her prey. Slow and steady, this track portrays a villainess. Reaching the midpoint of the album, “Ice-Cold” picks things up quite a bit with a howling guitar and slamming beat, pulling us out of the more atmospheric numbers that came before, with an anthem for a lone wolf in society.
“Where Do We Go” submerges us back in sorrow, with the music creating a sense of drowning slowly, plunging deeper into the dark below, which happens to pair perfectly with the lyrical motifs of staying afloat. “Now I Rise” is a smaller track, focused on issues of self esteem and self confidence, and is a nice diversion from the more cinematic tracks on the album.
“Bee’s Knees” is another track made for single treatment, and may be our favorite on the album. This pure pop confection is as dark and moody as the rest of the album, but its melody and structure lean themselves to radioplay more than almost any other track on the album. The lyrics, focusing on receiving the adulation of another and internalizing it, are clever and captivating. We have this one on repeat.
“There’s Nobody Left” pivots away from radio ready tracks and instead gives us a few different musical textures through a lament on being left behind, with whopping 5:31 in runtime to create a more immersive experience.
Finally, the album concludes with “Shut Up”, another single contender, which packs the most bite of all of the numbers. While fitting in with the general sonic landscape, it’s the first time the point of view shifts from feeling down or neglected to anger, serving as a bookend to an emotional journey. While we started this journey lamenting over not appreciating someone, we emerge as someone who’s sick of feeling bad and has choice words for the person that put us on the journey.
TRACK LIST
Perfect Disaster
Phonetic Dreams
Underwater City
He Neer Talked
Guinea Pig
Ice-Cold
Where Do We Go
Now I Rise
Bee’s Knees
There’s Nobody Left
Shut Up