LISTEN: The French Kings

The French Kings - "French Kings"


The French Kings - "HYRODREAMA"


With walls of harmonized guitars cutting in and out, The French Kings are simply symphonic. There’s a classical edge to the music; it’s not that it literally sounds classical as much as it assumes a certain dignified stature. And when the guitars convalesce and meld with the synthesizers that line the background, the music takes on an almost celestial feel. Singer Martin “Santino” Bonventre flexes his vocal cords around as if he was Freddie Mercury while those harmonized guitars slay anything in their way. There’s a phrase that I’ve heard used while recording vocals: “push air” (i.e. push the air out of your lungs, give it your all). When you listen through The French Kings’ Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s hard to believe there was any air left in Bonventre’s lungs when he finished some of these vocal takes.

Martin “Santino” Bonventre was the touring keyboardist for Ratatat, and on Ladies and Gentlemen, his debut album working with cousin Nicholas “Numerius” Bonventre as The French Kings, it’s clear some of that band’s harmonized guitar wail rubbed off on this new project (then again, Ratatat’s Mike Stroud is the album’s executive producer). But where Ratatat focuses on instrumental, groove-heavy, dancefloor fair, The French Kings strive for uplifting, textured, soulful, classical-leaning sounds with more of a nod to pop. Throughout Ladies and Gentlemen, it sounds as though Bonventre is still searching for a definitive voice, but he provides an interesting and fairly effective mix of influences ranging from the quirkiness of MGMT, the emotiveness of Michael Jackson, that Freddie Mercury vocal flexibilty, and the aforementioned Ratatat.

Stream/download (for free) Ladies and Gentlemen below.

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