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.
(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.
YouTube has “Nice Try” (audio only) at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnK31wgCGtY . Their French-language cover of the Beatles song “Penny Lane” can be heard here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaDlVJtDCjQ . A mind-boggling 91 videos of Les Sinners songs is available at this address: www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jPq6V4cPrs&list=PLsuZiqyAOc0PUl3l5cKPSI1WpVp5TWFl8 .
(April 2015/2)
