AVEC PLAISIR IS
Guitar/Vocals — Sam Winsor
Guitar/Vocals — Sébastien Vézina
Bass/Vocals — Julien Besner
Drums — Maxime Verreault
Avec Plaisir are the Montréal indie punk quartet taking your local basement show by storm.
Described by their peers as ‘eugh’ and ‘how do you pronounce their name?’, the band has grown from their 2019 formation to deliver a stellar 2022 debut album, An Album, blending mathy riffs, gruff vocals, and earworm melodies. Sam Winsor and Sébastien Vézina’s laid back lyricism show off the band's carefree attitude while being held together by the low notes of bassist Julien Besner and explosive drumming of Maxime Verreault.
Avec Plaisir est un quatuor Montrélais indie punk à voir dans un sous-sol près de chez vous.
Abordant les choses profondes de la vie, le groupe formé en 2019 a frappé un grand coup avec son premier album, An Album, en 2022, mélangeant les rythmes math, les voix crues et les mélodies accrocheuses. Le lyricisme nonchalant et les guitares déjantées de Sam Winsor et Sébastien Vézina démontrent un refus catégorique de se prendre trop au sérieux, le tout soutenu par une fondation solide par Julien Besner à la basse et les percussions explosives de Maxime Verreault à la batterie.
PHOTOS
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Uproxx Best Emo Albums Of 2022
Here’s pretty much all I could find out about Avec Plaisir: this is a band of 30-somethings from Montreal that plays a kind of mathy, melodic, and unmistakably “revival” type of emo that immediately brings hometown heroes Gulfer to mind. Why every one of their song titles begins with “J” is a mystery for another time. What I know about their debut is that An Album might not be as literal as the band name itself, which translates to “with pleasure.” This isn’t the kind of music that makes 30-somethings start a band unless they had their hearts in it, and every second of An Album radiates with the joy of artists revisiting the music of their youth with a sense of purpose and chops that can only be accessed with age.
- Ian Cohen, Uproxx
Really Rad Records
Although they’ve been playing together since 2019, Avec Plaisir really came to life in 2022. With the release of their debut LP, the modestly titled An Album, they built on everything impressive about their Demos for Dave and I Don’t Really Car EPs. Throwing emo, math rock, punk, and even flashes of post-rock into a blender, the Montreal foursome have honed their craft. From the second that noodly riff kicks in on “Jarry St.” following the introductory ambiance of “Junction Before Jarry St.” it’s full speed ahead. “Julien’s Song” and “Jabroni” give the band a chance to flex their pop rock muscles and turn in some of the catchiest hooks on the record, and the instrumental “Jeopardy Answers” leans into full math, bursting and twinkling like an auditory sparkler.
The stop-start cadence of “Jujube” is so mesmerizing it’s easy to miss the fact that it’s about a dog–but, really, doesn’t that just make it all the more endearing? By the time the gang vocals at the end of closer “Jambalaya” have been buried under looping riffs, it’s only been 25 minutes. What a pleasure indeed.
- RRR
More Friends Than Fans Split
Each band fits together well and lends the project a sense of cohesions than most splits, even good ones, often lack, but each band also has their own identity which keeps the whole thing from feeling rote. All four emphasize bright, mathy riffs and chipper hooks; where Avec Plaisir tends to deemphasize the mathy aspects of their sound, using them to provide flavor rather than honing in on them, Champagne Colored Cars brings more of a jazz flair, particularly on the lounge-emo “Microfilm.” Fox Lake’s take is the fastest paced, both their tracks constantly pushing forward and lending the split a sense of momentum leading into Narrow/Arrow’s airier, string-kissed contributions. It all has the flow of a single artist’s LP, with natural peaks and valleys. Pick it up on Bandcamp.
- Zac Djamoos, Merry-Go-Round Magazine