Album Review: Guillaume & The Coutu Dumonts / ‘Twice Around the Sun’ (Circus Company)

★★★★☆

At times kinda kitsch and kinda retro – the very name of the band sounds velvet-crushed and cabaret-bound – but yet hella upfront and pretty damn catchy. With a deep house and oozy electro-funk profile, Guillaume Coutu Dumont and his Sound Effects collaborators catch the sound of the high life that’s been tainted, or play to a fashionista wronged; the title track shows the dark side of the glamour and glitz with immobilized R&B.

Labelled as subversive house music for GCD’s third album, “Morning Gin” is only par for the course in a deep house direction, and “Constellation” is cool if far from an uprising in ice-cube melting, horn-cooing clubbing. Despite these spots of modesty seeming to pass the time before inspiration strikes back, the sun’s double orbit is definitely capable of killing the chit-chat with a grand entrance and wanting to get everyone from dignitaries to socialites moving to the same beat.

“Ten Thousand Feet” brings a certain filtered glamour to the disco, twinkling its way until it’s moonlit. “Discotic Space Capsule” breaks the dress code with an acid-flecked roller telling everyone to jack while striking a pose with its out-there keys. Picking up on the acid theme, “Man, Woman and Soul” sweeps from a low key foundation as Guillaume isn’t as big a show-off as first thought, quietly and craftily goes about broadening the album’s range and shape-shifting the slickness.

File under: Art Department, Daphni, Dave Aju