Honey for Petzi returns. (A little) more than a decade after the last album of the trio from Western Switzerland (General Thoughts and Tastes, 2011), let’s celebrate today the release, by Two Gentlemen again, of Observations + Descriptions, featuring twelve tracks of frank, agile and evolving emotions – as if cut with a sharp and subtle knife.

The trio, consisting of Sami Benhadj Djilali (guitar and vocals), Philippe Oberson (bass and vocals) and Christian Pahud (drums and vocals), emerged in Lausanne at the end of the 20th century. At the time, the post-rock scene was blooming and Honey for Petzi added its own corolla with their geometric music, featuring rhythmic phrasings that highlight weak beats, pitfalls and syncopations, a gripping sound and unexpected harmonic progressions.

This aesthetic was to undergo several mutations in the course of the band’s outstanding records – in particular Heal All Monsters (produced by Steve Albini, no less) and Nicholson (2003), both on Two Gentlemen.

At the end of last year, Honey for Petzi released a new track, Écoute: the odd time signatures that were the hallmark of the trio’s previous work were present but augmented by a form of joy, a liberating impulse that had not been heard before – a precision mechanism, once again, but underpinning an emotional statement. Grammatically, Écoute (“Listen”) could be included in two categories: as a noun (the action of listening) but perhaps also as an imperative – implying: this and what’s about to follow.

And indeed: this track is both a preamble and an invitation to discover the whole of Observations + Descriptions, which is being released today. The group collectively explains its genesis as follows: “It was at the end of 2018 that we approached the idea of playing together again. After a few days together, the writing of Observations + Descriptions was spread out over 2019 and 2020. In early 2021 we submitted the new songs to our label, which was enthusiastic and interested in releasing the album.” Understandably too! This record includes a whole arsenal of weapons. Propulsive progressions: Apnée (which was also released as a single at the end of 2021), Island or Géométrie feature a polyrhythmic fury that paves the way for crazy dances. Echorec pushes the envelope even further: a punching bass, a stratigraphic guitar, vocal animalcules that play with the notion of time: a pure masterpiece of energy and strangeness – like Kawasaki and its parodic and deadpan humour, inspired by the Bardot/Gainsbourg couple.

Let’s hear it from the band again: “We picked up where we left off with General Thoughts and Tastes. It was an album that already featured tracks exclusively with vocals, more ‘pop’ formats than we had done before.” The ethereal subtlety of other tracks on Observations + Descriptions (like Infini, or Dog even), with their heart-wrenching chords, testifies to this inflection, which coincides moreover with some more risk-taking: “What is new in this latest album is the (significant) presence of tracks sung in French.” This is a fertile step, which brings us right into the poetry of Benhadj Djilali, Oberson and Pahud: something that is at once a form of attention to detail, semi-automatic writing and melancholy, even elegiac ecstasy at times.

Observations + Descriptions, and this is its tour de force, manages to bring together these paths that one would think parallel, why not divergent even, in a more than coherent unity or confluence. It is perhaps, quite simply, a definition of identity: maintaining a powerful heart under the multiplicity of its movements.