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Sounding much as if Sonic Youth had Noel Gallagher writing their songs, Querelle blend that glorious off kilter guitar dissonance to ocean sized melodies - sometimes smacking you right in the face with their instant hooks, other times creeping up on you and insidiously sinking their claws into you slowly. As a song like the opener SHANTY TOWN attests to, Querelle can do multidirectional math rock like the best of them, at times echoing the sparse beauty and extended guitar excursions of Yo La Tengo, at others exploding into noisy abrupt alt-punk like the Archers Of Loaf - leaving the extended coda to mesmerise with its cyclical magnetism. SORE, much like most of the Lee Renaldo penned material from Sonic Youths' Goo, burns with intense guitar abuse - molten riffs erupting from the calm of the quieter moments in time to rip your brain from your skull and burn your synapses.

The slower releasing JUST A SONG, rides along on an insistent repeated guitar riff and Led Zeppelin-esque drum beat, a creepily incessant song that drops in droning guitar riffs and a hypnotic vocal.
More Kings Of Leon than Sonic Youth, I DON'T WANT IT finds drawled country vocals banging heads with the more left field guitar soundscape, culminating in a noisy collision where Gypsy screams his lungs out as if to make himself heard above the ensuing chaos. INSECT-O-CUTER, more attuned to Blonde Redheads style of unusual vocal gymnastics - grooves along on more dissonant guitars and diversive bass and drum directions. It's something Querelle do again on LITTLE SILLY THINGS, Gypsy again stretching his voice off in a million different directions, never someone to rest on his laurels.

While Querelles sound can be traced back to a variety of sources, most obvious and apparent - Sonic Youth, Blonde Redhead and Yo La Tengo, these are all reference points that are never unwelcome and always an extremely good thing in the right hands. These are songs that are gloriously off-kilter slices of alt-pop genius, the kind of stuff to lend itself to cult worship. Like most the best things, Querelle are one of those bands destined to reside in the realms of underground glory.

Querelle, born and bred in Italy but resident in North London, formed in 2001. They played beautiful music and mined the elegiac poise of Blonde Redhead, the clipped art-rock of The Lapse and the angular onslaught of Sonic Youth. They looked every bit as exquisite as they sounded, flirted with local cult status, inspired lust and broke hearts, then promptly split up without releasing any records. If not too good to be true, it seemed they were at least too good to exist.
When they finally emerged from their self-imposed exile, they continued exactly where they left off: walking the boundary between haunting melody and blissful noise. A collage of aching guitar that bursts into jagged feedback, underpinned by sinuous bass and cavernous drums; modelling skinny hips and angular cheekbones, bringing mesmerising tones and bruising cacophonies.
They looked every bit as exquisite as they sounded, inspired lust and broke hearts, only this time round they released split singles with the Wow and Dudley Corporation, and signed with Sink And Stove Records.
The line up currently consists of 2 cocks, 2 tits, 10 strings and 2 sticks.
They've also played with the likes of KaitO, Life Without Buildings, Degrassi and Econoline.
Everyone has an idea of what their ideal band should sound like. It's just that it's very rare for these bands to exist anywhere outside of your head.
Fortunately, these bands do occasionally prove to exist in real life as well. Many bands deserve attention. Querelle are worthy of your obsession.

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