On the cover of their new album ‘Malamore’, their first for Because Music, Lionel and Marie Limiñanas are back in black and looking ineffably cool. They’re stood next to a classic silver Fifties trailer, shot at a beach festival in the French town of Paulilles by the Spanish border, just 30 minutes drive from the duo’s home town of Perpignan. They’d been playing a DJ set, “only with 45 rpm vinyl - Sixties punk, Italian pop, movie soundtracks and Seventies rock tracks,” they recall. “The picture syncs well to the colour of ‘Malamore’, like the artwork of a movie soundtrack. The lettering on the cover is significant too.” The content of their DJ set, and the fact that ‘Malamore’ is also the title of a 1982 Italian film and a word that describes an obsessive brand of unrequited love, are the keys to unlocking The Limiñanas. One of France’s most beloved treasures, their latest and greatest album is rooted in garage-punk, but with the flair and range of a movie soundtrack: Serge Gainsbourg, meets Yé-Yé meets Phil Spector. The Nuggets compilations and early Stooges and Suicide albums meets the Sixties film genres of Commedia All'italiana and French Nouveau Vague, while sounding only like The Limiñanas. “We integrate a lot of different influences,” Marie and Lionel declare, “but most of the time, it’s unconsciously, and very naïve.” ‘Malamore’, like its 2013 predecessor ‘Costa Blanca’, is even structured like a soundtrack. “Or a reading book record, like we had in our childhoods,” the couple explain. “With ‘Malamore’ we were thinking of Sixties Italian sketch movies: Dino Risi’s ‘Les Monstres’ [The Monsters] is a great example. The main idea is a story with a start and an end, which can be linked even if they exist in different universes. Everything here is about love stories - thwarted love, aborted passions, funny or dramatic. But our album isn’t directly related to the Italian movie, we just found the title adapted to our record and the title alone sounded really good!”
Shifting from dramatic scene to scene, ‘Malamore’, just like The Limiñanas themselves, is a magnificently moody experience. Music for the ears and the eyes and quite unlike any other record you’ll hear in 2016.
