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Music

Corridor Made the Best French Record of 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 (in 2022, Earth Explodes)

And you can listen to the entire thing here, without further delay.

This article originally appeared on Noisey France.

You've obviously figured out that the title of this article is a hyperbole, a kind of positive exaggeration and benevolent grandiloquence. Because it's technically impossible to know if Supermercado, the second album by Montreal-based band Corridor, will actually be the best French record of the next five years, nor is there any scientific proof that the world will explode in 2022.

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But if we take a moment to stop ourselves—and perhaps take a seat—and think about it, we'll realize pretty quickly that, because we really don't know anything that will happen in 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 (or even 2022), anything and everything that can be said about these years, or even about this very second, will probably be a lie—and we can't prove the contrary, in any event. For it's 2017, and the problem at hand is significantly different. Four months of the year have already come and gone, and the fifth is well underway. We already know that Camille and François and the Atlas Mountains [US Ed. Note: these are French bands that our colleagues at Noisey France assure us are Bad] are still releasing records and yet nobody is on the streets protesting. So we can clearly, openly, formally, and without a single doubt, assert that Supermercado is the best French record of 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2020, and even 2022 (for all we know, at least, since I doubt the Earth will explode exactly at midnight on January 1, 2022, even if it's a possibility we shouldn't ignore).

It's also important to note that Supermercado is a record that fits perfectly into Corridor's oeuvre and represents a logical outcome of their prior work. With their 2013 EP Un Magicien En Toi ("A Magician In You"), Corridor made an impeccable musical debut — it was a promising failure, but a failure all the same. With Le Voyage Éternel ("The Eternal Voyage") in 2015, the Canadian band set the bar high with an EP that was as impressive as it was original, with the exception that it was an album packed with flashes of greatness and moments of untouchable purity, but one that was equally polluted with tangents that should've stayed in the band's practice space.

With Supermercado, Corridor brings a certain something that could feed the discographies of seven or eight established groups—and though it's just one album, with a scant 11 tracks (including an introduction), it's a spectacular affair: Supermercado is a record of graceful ferocity, full of youthful anthems and guitars jangling like Moorish swords, as if the whole thing was written to celebrate the glory of a country of wolves and wild abandon. Think Television circa Marquee Moon joining forces with Murmur-era R.E.M. to cover Love's Forever Changes on Sebadoh's gear, connecting 1977 to 1983, 1967, and 1996 to reveal a sound that encapsulates 2017—and 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022, and the entirety of this pitiless era we can't put our finger on.

I could continue like this for pages and pages and tell you about "Coup Épée" ("Swing of a Sword"), "Le Grand Écart" ("The Great Divide"), or "L'Espoir Sans Fin" ("Hope Without End"), but I'll concentrate on reminding you about one thing: men, wherever they are, need to believe that there's some kind of miracle at work in the world; without that belief, everything is fucked. And Supermercado is, very concretely, one of the things that contributes to that miracle.

The album comes on on May 26 on the label Requiem For a Twister. It's currently available on Soundcloud in its entirety, for the first time in the history of graceful ferocity, youthful anthems, and pitiless eras. Please, do me a favor: stop what you're doing and listen to it.