Prince Arthur — 3,14 Reasons

Why make it simple when you can make it complicated? With Prince Arthur, there is no question of this ; when listening to this "3.14 Reasons", the only difficulty is the variation of identity. Because if Arto Schmidiger exalts the art of complication, he does it in an almost casual way. Austrian by birth, residing in Reykjavik (Iceland), this forest engineer delivers a scholarly, accurate and tortuous pop, something between Sufjan Stevens for the melodic subtlety and The Fiery Furnaces for its tempestuous bifurcations. If the piece seems super-charged and is sometimes nerve-wracking to listen to, boredom is avoided thanks to the eight musicians who ride this rollercoaster without shedding a tear, without making a cry as if imperturbable (do they share the same fate of those banging away on their typewriters ?). But let’s not take away – or very little – from Arto and his varied talent : rocksteady ("Our Romantic Expedition"), bossa ("Tinkle") no-wave ("Ironic Alphabet"), accordion ("Mustaches"), reggae ("Cloud") or manouche jazz ("Mr. P"), the man masters them all with staggering ease as if prodigiously bored with himself. If the musical comparison is somewhat forced, one must refer his attitude to that of Gruff Rhys: Prince Arthur is shackled with the same joyful autism that goes with creation, with all the distractions and ravings that this implies, sometimes painful, but so profitable to music.