Among American garage-rock fans, Sinerisme is the only album that is at all well known. I had previously heard “Nice Try” on the Pebbles, Volume 13 LP, and this song proves that Les Sinners can snarl with the best of them; the other English songs are similarly raw garage rock recordings for the most part. The album has out-of-the-ordinary vocals and musical passages, notably on the sort-of love song, “Cleopatra”.
I later encountered one of the French-language songs from this album, “Sinnerisme” on the double-CD release, The Essential Pebbles Collection, Volume 1. While still strong stuff, the French songs are more melodic and a little closer to pop music; the mixture of the two languages and several musical styles makes for a delightful album.
Les Sinners performed for months in Montreal clubs and gathered R&B influences from the personnel changes and from the larger musical scene around them. Canadian country music star Roger Miron signed the band to his Rusticana record label in 1966, and they quickly released three French-language singles, including “Sinnerisme”. The record album followed later that year with other tracks that they had laid down in the studio. Quirky song titles were definitely their forte: “Candid Colour Count Down”, “Sour as a Sidewalk”, and “La Troisieme Fuite de Mohamed ‘Z’ Ali” (“The Third Escape of Mohamed ‘Z’ Ali”).
(April 2013)
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Les Sinners is from French Canada and is best known in this country for a powerful English-language garage rock song, “Nice Try”; one of their French-language songs, “Sinnerisme” was also included on a garage rock compilation album that I have. They have released a total of 6 albums (mostly in French), and several of the bandmembers released two more albums under the name La Révolution Française. Even French Wikipedia has only a short article on the band that does little more than list the album names.
(April 2015/2)
