You came back to me.
What else is in your mind?
We know better than men though we are dogs.
I know that everything we create won’t exist anymore.
Stuffed Foxes, a French sextet, thrive in the friction of communal living and the fire of unfiltered collaboration. Under a leaky roof, they traded comfort for creation, channeling raw energy into music that smolders before erupting in waves. Restless and relentless, they dismantled hierarchy from the start, shaping songs through endless jams; spontaneous, volatile, and ever-expanding. These sessions serve as both incubator and amplifier, each member a vital cog in a machine built for chaos and catharsis.
Their sound churns like a storm just before landfall: dense, hypnotic, an unbroken tide of distortion and drive. Noise walls crash and swell like My Bloody Valentine, drone-heavy dirges echo the slow burn of Swans, while psychedelic vapors rise like heatwaves off blacktop, recalling Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Veldt. Yet, in the wreckage of past influences, they find something unique: an unshackled, volatile strain of post-shoegaze that roars and rumbles with the same fire that fueled Six By Seven. Their latest record, Standardized, distills these elements into a furious, sprawling testament to tension, release, and the endless push toward something wild, unbroken, and alive.
With Standardized, Stuffed Foxes appear to have reached an aesthetic milestone, transcending the semantics of the genres that once defined them. They have ‘de-standardized’ their sound and embraced a sense of freedom, opening up to the possibilities of a wider creative spectrum.
Standardized erupts with Biting the Dawn, a raw, relentless dirge where Léo’s recitative delivery rides the crest of a storm—guitars saturated past the point of recognition, drums crashing like waves against jagged rock. The momentum shifts as Merry Xmas slashes through with sharp, staccato angular riffs, channeling the serrated urgency of Gang of Four and Fugazi, before vaulting skyward into a crescendo that recalls Ride at their most expansive and electrified. Merry Xmas was written at Bourges’ music venue Nadir. Merry Xmas begins with a ternary rhythm and an almost danceable drum pattern, setting the tone for a track built around raw, unpolished guitars with minimal effects, and clashing with each other. They defy traditional harmonic and tonal structures in favor of something more visceral and direct.
The video for Merry Xmas was directed by Flavie Herbreteau. On a sun-soaked beach, ultra-rich revelers indulge in an absurd Christmas feast. Shot on a camcroder at Guesclin beach in Saint-Coulomb, it adopts the aesthetics of a family film to capture their Christmas celebrations—a spectacle of excess, gluttony, and insatiable indulgence. The playful beginning quickly transforms into a biting satire on consumerism, as they devour everything in sight, including a whole Christmas tree, in a spectacle reminiscent of Villeneuve’s 2008 short ‘Next Floor’.
Pretend To Be A Dog explores the fragility of creation and the inevitability of loss. A reunion unfolds, but questions linger—what thoughts remain unspoken? The speaker acknowledges a shared understanding beyond human limitations, yet beneath it lies a stark realization: everything built, everything imagined, will eventually vanish. The impermanence of existence weighs heavy, casting doubt over what remains.
Bees thrashes in dissonant syncopation, jagged and unpredictable. Spoken word venom spits through the static, summoning the ghosts of Suicide and Lydia Lunch, while the guitars scrape and stumble, unpredictable and off-kilter. The drums lurch, dragging the track through its own wreckage, a slow-motion collapse of sound and fury. Rough Up stands in stark contrast, stripped of excess, held together by the brittle bones of two acoustic chords and the spectral hum of an organ. It sways with the fragile intimacy of a Velvet Underground confession, a whispered admission barely held above the silence. But quiet never lasts.
I Heard About Love In A Book unspools like a half-remembered dream, blues chords curling through static, guitars reverberating in the empty spaces. Drums stumble and start, staggered rhythms cracking the quiet before voices rise: a fevered, fractured choir. The song smolders, eerie and urgent, summoning the spectral echoes of Modest Mouse and Arcade Fire, where passion collides with something unspoken, something lurking just beyond reach. Standardized breaks loose like a runaway train, distortion piled high, guitars grinding against a rhythm that pounds without mercy. Saturation swells, raw and relentless, a force too wild to be tamed, too hungry to be silenced. Restraint is a distant memory, and all that remains is a howl tearing through the wreckage, chasing the glimmer of something feral and free. The album closes with Return, a whisper after the storm. Bare guitar notes ripple, hushed vocals drifting through the quiet…Jeff Buckley’s ghost humming in the spaces between.
Standardized is out now via Stolen Body Records and French labels Reverse Tapes and Figures Libres. Listen to Standardized below and order the album here.
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