Pierre Lecarpentier – “Braindead” manages to round all of its eclectic corners into one hard-hitting, shimmering sphere

Pierre Lecarpentier is a young French artist who lives near Paris and started making music when he was a kid. A multi-instrumentalist, he has played in several bands, and started recording solo about a year ago. Lecarpentier plays all the instruments on his self-produced 2021 EP, “Braindead”, and is supported on vocals by his friend Vincent Paraboschi. His recipe of melodic-through-loud, and instrumental to vocal, has been heard before, but the way the ingredients blend is totally fresh in today’s copy and paste scene, and becomes gradually captivating, as Lecarpentier and Paraboschi take us back to when rock was full of gritty guitars, steady rhythms and soaring vocals.

The burning walls of guitars and the insistence of clear melody even in chaos brings something fresh to the table, and it is what sets Pierre Lecarpentier so high above the rest of the too-polished, too-mechanical, and too-predictable rock crowd. There is plenty of dirty driving instrumental music and interesting vocal interludes on this EP that will appeal to a vast diversity of fans.

Important to Pierre Lecarpentier is the compositional sophistication of his songs, as well as the textural impact and this is why he comes off as a more visceral and emotional version of his mainstream corporate contemporaries. The opening title track, “Braindead”, is a perfect example of Lecarpentier’s hallowing guitar-laden experience being both cathartic and compositionally developed. This instrumental track probably represents Pierre Lecarpentier at his most efficiently pure.

“By The River” ft. Vincent Paraboschi is unpretentious riff-driven rock n’ roll at its best. The grungy guitar tones ripple across the thumping rhythm, as Paraboschi gives a display of his vocal prowess, mixing melody and grit. The insistent piano chords lend extra power to the arrangement. The whole thing bubbles, glimmers, and echoes thanks to the potent blend of instruments and vocals.

Those who enjoy brilliant driving, post or epic psychedelic rock, will find plenty more to love on “Everything In The World (Leads Me To You)”. The song crafts splendorous and mystifying atmospheres which are injected with just enough melody and plenty of guitar and drum bombast. Pierre Lecarpentier manages to round all of its eclectic corners into one hard-hitting, shimmering sphere.

“Leaving The Birdcage” is no less intriguing, as it plays on the soft-loud aesthetic. Pierre Lecarpentier’s guitar, wails, screams and moans, as it cuts straight through the beat. It’s hard to peg anything here as a flaw when the music is this surreal and utterly beautiful. The EP closes with “Ballad Of The White Lady” ft. Vincent Paraboschi – a mix of acid and psychedelic rock, with flavors of the blues.

Lecarpentier keeps things consistently interesting and makes it clear how much attention is being paid to each and every piece of sound on this record. All throughout, “Braindead” Pierre Lecarpentier expertly carves out entrancing and driving soundscapes filled with both melodic motifs and crushing, guitar-laden squalls. Any musician dexterous enough to pull this off on their first record as successfully as Lecarpentier has done here, is not an artist to be ignored.

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