I think it was while standing at Victoria Warehouse for the debut performance of new material from Christine and the Queens as part of 6 Music Festival that I knew PARANOÏA, ANGELS, TRUE LOVE was going to be a beast of an album. A beast in scale (this is a hefty three discs of music), but also a beast in its refusal to conform to expectations. The track where I had this feeling, the immensely sprawling and emotional ‘Track 10’ is an 11 minute epic of spoken word, choral vocals and chanting and ends up being the best entry point to uncovering exactly what sort of beast this album is.
It’s a lot. And while I said similar in my review of last year’s excellent French-language prologue album Redcar les adorables étoiles, here the accessibility of the music has never been harder for a casual listener. Pulling inspiration yet again from play Angels in America, as well as his own personal experiences of grief and loss, it’s sits as a continuation of that piece of artwork. Tracks like ‘Track 10’, ‘Marvin descending’, ‘He’s been shining for ever, your son’ forgo any pop rules; there’s no blueprint to follow here and at times can end up feeling slightly on the wrong side of self-indulgence. The more time I spent with this music, though, the more layers and emotion I unearthed. It’s music that sounds vital and can be incredibly thrilling to hear. It’s often even more difficult to uncover the lyrics of these songs in English, so many times words are shouted or don’t seem to exist at all but there’s enough to hold your attention for the next left turn.
The main thing that gripped me at first is the production, which feels like the most collaborative Christine and the Queens project yet, with producer Mike Dean leaving a huge impact on the drum machine driven production style we hear on every track here. Take ‘Tears are so soft’, with its almost trip-hop vibe that kicks off the album so well. On the whole, the album lacks the variety heard on the Redcar record, which felt much more organic than this, instead we have echoing guitars and an expansive chasm of sound. It’s almost a hip hop inspired prog rock album at times, on the fantastic ‘I met an angel’ especially. The quieter moments fall away to allow for a soaring moment nearly 4 minutes in, as drums clatter around layers of vocals. Tracks like this put the album alongside records like The Weeknd’s Dawn FM in the powerful way an atmosphere is created.
The collaborators extend to upcoming star 070Shake, who has a star turn on single ‘True Love’ and ‘Let me touch you once’, while it’s Madonna’s three spoken word interludes that bring the sprawling album together into more of a cohesive experience. It’s a dynamic that works like a musical icon guiding a lost soul through their own personal and musical journey, the way Christine and the Queens has formed pop music over the last few years and yet defied his own expectations continuously makes the jump to that other Queen of Pop obvious. All three tracks that include Madonna’s vocals, ‘Angels crying in my bed’, ‘ I met an angel’ and ‘Lick the light out’ complete a trio of standout moments on an album that did need them.
The last of those tracks appears in the strongest run of music on the whole album, ‘We have to be friends’ recalls the funk of Chris even just a little, while the two sections of ‘Lick the light out’ lead into the record’s most powerful hook ‘See me, hear me, feel me’. It’s lead single ‘To be honest’ that ends up being the defining single track on the record though, the best example of a ‘Christine and the Queens’ song here, but, for me, also showing up the issues I had with the album elsewhere.
On ‘To be honest’ the lyrics are direct and punchy, vocally powerful and emotional. There’s plenty of tracks on Paranoia, Angels, True Love that just don’t have this immediacy and can often fade into the ether amongst the more standout moments. I’d bet most listeners wouldn’t be able to pick out ‘Shine’ over one of the other songs here? Thankfully the rest of the closing ‘act’ of tracks does a lot to carry the whole album over the line and stops it from feeling just too samey by the end. Closer ‘Big eye’ is spectacularly epic in scale.
This album is a lot. It’s a sprawling epic opera that’s as hard to write about as it can be to unpack while listening. For me, there’s more than enough on here that’s a thrill and the emotional centre of the album, the passion and musical power of Red as a performer is what makes this still an essential listen. It won’t be an album for everyone, but for daring forward-thinking music, he’s one of the few still reaching into the abyss and sharing what he’s found. A beast of an album worth trying to tame.
Words by Sam Atkins
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