Mlah – Accordion, brass, and street French

Studio Davout, accordion in the street

In late 1988, Mlah came out of Studio Davout with accordion, trumpet, handclaps and bass locked to the same tempo. Voices piled into choruses that could have come from a bar or from a small stage. Les Négresses Vertes were not cleaning up a scene for the studio. They let Paris into the microphones: rag-and-bone lines, a Maghrebi shade in the melody, musette swing, and a punk refusal to sit still.

Produced by Clive Martin and Sodi, the debut landed on Delabel with fourteen tracks that do not share one style. “La Valse” opens with a tilted waltz. “Zobi la Mouche” turns a fly into a fast comic song, Noel Rota’s rapid vocal cutting through brass that keeps moving. “Voilà l’été” stretches a summer lyric across the track, while “C’est pas la mer à boire” keeps a grin in a song about getting by. Three of the founders had come through the Zingaro horse circus. Another had worked as a clown. You hear that background in the sudden stops and the flourishes.

What makes Mlah last is the way the tracks are built, not a layer of exotic colour on French rock. Arrangements snap between a solo line and a ragged group shout. Melodies borrow from guinguette and then speed up toward something closer to gypsy punk, before the English press had a clean name for it. The band played like a neighbourhood that had decided to become an orchestra, rough on purpose, and the arrangements hold.