Alcest need no introduction. The project of the Frenchman Neige — real name Stéphane Paut — invented, at the turn of the 2010s, a genre in its own right, blackgaze, where the fury of black metal dissolves into the shimmering sheets of shoegaze. After a darker detour, Les Chants de l’Aurore reconnects with the luminous, dreamlike vein that made the band’s name, and offers one of its most accomplished expressions.
The critics (an 84 average across ten reviews) hail this return to the essence. They praise the record’s melodic beauty, its crystalline production, and that rare faculty Neige has of transforming melancholy into a form of appeased ecstasy. The voice, now murmured, now screamed, traces melodies of an almost childlike purity.
Musically, the album is an invitation to inner travel. The guitars sparkle, the rhythms race then subside, and the whole bathes in a golden light that evokes the daybreak promised by the title. Alcest sing of childhood, memory, that nostalgia for a glimpsed elsewhere which Neige has made the heart of his work from the first day.
The downside of this constancy is a certain predictability: whoever knows Alcest will not be disoriented, and one may regret that the band explore little new ground. But the mastery of the formula is such that the pleasure remains whole, and the sincerity of the approach disarms criticism.
Verdict: 8.5/10. A record of radiant grace, confirming Alcest in their role as a ferryman between shadow and light. A luminous success.
