Hailing from Montreal, Choses Sauvages are a French-speaking dance punk outfit who also blend indie disco with a sprinkling of neo-psychedelia. Their latest tour has seen them play major stages in Quebec as well as internationally, where they have featured on the lineups for some of Europe’s biggest festivals, such as Mad Cool Festival, The Great Escape and Pitchfork Music Festival Paris.

Choses Sauvages are quickly gaining a reputation for their explosive live shows, actively on a mission to light up every stage they play on, led by frontman Félix Bélisle, who has been described as incandescent.
Their influences range from indie rock bands such as Death From Above 1979 and LCD Soundsystem, to older bands such as Sonic Youth and The Stooges. Their influences alone are an advert for Choses Sauvages’ expansive sound that they have crafted meticulously over the years. They ensure the listener is truly captivated, whether listening to one of their two albums (Choses Sauvages, Choses Sauvages II) or one of their more recent singles, such as 2023’s Pression or Incendie au paradis, released earlier this year.

In anticipation of their third album, Choses Sauvages III, to be released at some point in 2025, Choses Sauvages have now released En joue.

En joue, or At Gunpoint in English, sees the band lean more into new wave than previous entries and is noticeably more varied as a result. Staccato bass notes are played over Philippe Gauthier Boudreau’s drums before a punchy guitar cuts through to embed that familiar new wave sound. Even with the bass and drums over the top, the guitar sounds isolated and timeless, and I’m reminded of Gang Of Four’s Damaged Goods in the first thirty seconds. When the keys kick in, En joue takes on a different form entirely. At first, they sound slightly whimsical but then they really start to stretch the mind. Around my fifth listen, I stared into the googling eyes of the spray-painted animal that forms part of En joue’s artwork and briefly lost myself in its near-human features. My hypnosis was partly self-induced trying to figure out what the animal was (it’s a cat, I think) but was also compounded by the lavish keys that coast above the other instruments.

Félix Bélisle’s vocals are as staccato as the guitar when he comes in, ‘Cours vite/Droit devant/ On nous a mis en joue’ (‘Run fast/Straight ahead/ They’re aiming at our heads’).

Speaking about En joue, Bélisle has said, “En joue refers to the feeling of helplessness faced by extremely violent international news from recent years. It also deals with the dehumanisation of certain populations taken hostage in armed conflicts and the fear of others.”

Suddenly the words, ‘L’essence qui fait de nous un monde/ bienveillant s’étouffe, je le sens’ (‘The essence that makes us kind people/ Is being snuffed out, I can feel it’) have an added poignancy. In the music video for En joue, the band aim their guitars and symbols like guns and then carry on playing happily, which adds a sinister dimension to the track’s otherwise buoyant tune.

Also in the video, Choses Sauvages also show flashes of explosivity from their live shows. Félix Bélisle stomps and thrashes in the centre of the shot. Later, the band emerge from under a bed wearing gruesome masks as more keys whizz by, sounding as if they’re coming from overhead.

Choses Sauvages will be releasing new album Choses Sauvages III in 2025 and live shows in the UK will be announced soon.

Review by Charva Writes Stuff