Le Groupe Cinématographique

The following article recently appeared in the Williamsburg Greenpoint News + Arts, a paper I know exists because I swiped a few copies the day they landed on the stoop of Pharmacy Neapolitano (on the corner of Graham and Metropolitan), but whose inexplicable lack of online presence serves as a serious inhibitor to proof of print for anyone living outside of my immediate neighborhood. The piece was written for the paper's LOVE issue, and I'm posting it here so you can share in it. (The LOVE , that is.)

Love of Cinema Powers Rock from Williamsburg's La Laque


credit: Sean McCabe

La Laque’s sole collective asset as a band is a DVD of Tenacious D’s "The Pick of Destiny" that lead singer Devery Doleman picked up before band practice one day at the FYE on 6th Avenue for $9.99. This may appear to be an odd investment for a band whose elegant style and sultry sound seems derived more from classic noir movies of the thirties than overlooked stoner comedies of 2007, but it’s astounding how many films this Williamsburg quintet has effectively combed for inspiration.

“We’re all HUGE, HUGE movie fans,” says drummer Ben Shapiro. “It’s kind of all we talk about, and all we think about all the time.”

Though the band initially formed in late 2003, La Laque has been together in its current incarnation since 2004, weaving songs initially born as straight surf rock and 60’s pop pastiche, into darker, sexier compositions, fraught with dirty surf guitar and swathed in Doleman’s textured, breathy vocals. The band’s evolution into, as guitarist and main songwriter Michael Leviton describes it, “a dark indie rock band with French, surfy elements,” has pushed them far beyond the borders of kitch and gimmick. Their songs, lustful and tragic, paint pictures of smoke filled dives, intimate rendezvous, and haughty femme fatales.

Doleman is partially responsible for guiding the band down this storyteller’s path. Since the band’s inception, she has penned La Laque’s lyrics completely in French, both to take advantage of her incredible talent for manipulating the language’s vocabulary and diction, and because she simply finds her voice to be a suppler instrument en Français. This presents her bandmates with the unique challenge of creating music sympathetic to lyrics in a foreign language.

“Most of us don’t know what the lyrics mean,” says Leviton. “Leah (Hayes) and Devery do – but the rest of us are responding to a kind of story or visual feeling of what they evoke. What it sounds like it’s expressing, as opposed to what it’s expressing in words. We may react to something that seems scary, or intensely romantic, just as you'd write music for a movie, I think.”

Luckily, the band’s organ player and backup singer (Hayes) is a horror movie fanatic, their main songwriter and guitarist (Leviton) also writes screenplays, and their bassist (Brad Banks) and drummer (Shapiro) have been known to seek out screenings of Otto Preminger noir films on the weekends. The band's recently released, self-titles EP suggests There may not be a band better equipped to spin French-led songs into luscious, compelling, cinema-style narrative.


credit: Sasha Rudensky

Though the dramatic interplay of Doleman’s cool, delicate delivery with the dark, lush waves of sound summoned by the rest of the band is clearly articulated on record, on stage the vocals can at times be sacrificed to the energy of the band’s live show. But even if her voice can’t push through the raucousness of the rhythm section, Doleman serves as a guide through La Laque’s live landscape with her sleek stage mannerisms, punctuating Hayes’ organ chords with perfectly timed bats of her eyelashes and dancing to Leviton's guitar.

“Devery, as a focus for the band, channels all of that smoldering energy on stage out to the audience,” says Banks. “Kind of like a lens that we all focus thorough, all that heat kind of comes through her to the crowd.”

Thus, even in a live show that rocks hard, something classic and cinematic is transmitted – a reflection of old glamour, and the sexual potency and mystery of the films the band collectively adores.

La Laque’s self-titled debut EP is now available on iTunes.