Ma jeunesse!: 8 Albums by Le Aids / Le Reste

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J'ai besoin d'apprendre le français pour mes futures perspectives de carrière, j'étais donc très heureux quand on m'a recommandé un artiste français à écouter. Le seul problème était que cet artiste chante en anglais ! Comment suis-je censé m'entraîner comme ça ?

Écouter cela me met cependant dans "l'esprit du débutant", car cette musique est une célébration de la jeunesse, dans ses bons et ses mauvais côtés.

Four years later and no better at French :(

I Like Major Chords... Very Much (2007)

8/10

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

TYPE OF POP: twee

REVIEW: So, ukeleles. These sinfully tiny guitars have been wreaking havoc on well-meaning lovers of aesthetics and emotions for years--don't believe me? Well there's an Agatha Christie short story where, no joke, a bunch of men get entrance by a whispy, melancholy, artistic young woman who likes to play a "uke"... back in the 1920s. Yep, a real MPDF (Manic Pixie Dream Flapper) if there ever was one. She gets murdered at the end of that story, so we don't get to find out if she ever plays "ironic" Louis Armstrong covers on that thing.

Anyway. Where was I. Oh, on this, the first album by French DIY pop outfit Le Aids, there's a hell of a lot of ukelele. In fact, the second song is about M. Aids just wants to dance around and play his ukelele. What I am saying is that I should hate this, and yet I do not--that song about wanting to play the ukelele is actually really catchy and fun! This whole album is catchy and fun, actually--I particularly like "You Are So Full Of Happiness, It Really Makes Me Sad Sometimes", which has a Penguin Cafe Orchestra sound to match its Penguin Cafe Orchestra title.

Also on this album is another folk-pop ballad about a girl named Cathy. You might even call it... an abundance of Katherines. (that's a book a girl gave me once, which i didn't much like--the book that is, i really liked the girl. come to think of it that was back when this album came out!)

RANKING: 2 of 6

The "Not Enough Too Much EP" (2007)

8/10

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

TYPE OF POP: synth

REVIEW: A concept EP: first, because of the joke-spotify-playlist nature of the track names, and also because this is all keyboards. No ukulele here! It kind of approaches dance music sometimes, but this just isn't tight enough to actually dance to. It's fun for all that--my fav track is "Girl", which is about a girl who (despite emulating kims Gordon and Deal) remains boring. Which... definitely 2007-vintage edge right there, but I don't mind it oddly--maybe this guy can get away with it because he's French.

RANKING: 4 of 6

Cum to Get Her (2009)

7/10

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

TYPE OF POP: dance

REVIEW: Cum? Unfortunately not--to be honest I'm still mostly flaccid.

Hey! It's not my fault! That's what the album's called!

Le Aids here has plugged in his ukulele and is going after the other most aggressively 2000s type of music there is, namely dance-punk. Some of these things groove and jitter like, idk, Bloc Party... look, thinking back on it it's very weird, because dance-punk was like, the music of my culture (NYC rich kids) back when this came out and I listened to it so much and yet basically none of it has stayed with me.

And maybe that's why the two best tracks on this are the least dance-punky: the odd attempt at analogue downtempo "Icicles Have No Ears" and the showtuney "People Are". I don't know, this band and its aggressive youthfulness makes me feel weird about my own adolescence.

RANKING: 5 of 6

The Lost Opportunities to Keep Quiet (2010)

6/10

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

TYPE OF POP: theatrical

REVIEW: Perhaps they should have taken those opportunities!

I don't actually want to be mean about this band--they're good!--but they keep giving me the best openings. And this is their weakest album, I'd say--this time around the very-2000s pop style they're going for is big whoa-ooh-whoa Arcade-Fire-isms, but oddly intermixed with straight-up noise music, and the overall vibe is just queasy. Especially since the noise tracks all have M. Aids' high-pitched vocal yawps on them, which stops them from really being effective as noise. Anyway, like, French Canadians can do this shit but actual French people can't. I'm pretty sure the Académie Française published something about that.

That said it's not actually a bad record (and remember, a 3 is not a bad score)! I quite like the Beatle-ish "Drive to the Country".

RANKING: 6 of 6

The Dark Ages (2014)

9/10

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

TYPE OF POP: noise

REVIEW: What a joyfully ugly record. See, Le Aids was experimenting with putting some noise in their pop on the last album, but this time around they've got it--this is in many ways an upbeat, energetic, almost bubblegum album, but everything is just so loud and abrasive and dirty and it's great. Also I don't know why I keep saying "they", this band is just one guy.

Anyway this is another album like Bob Music or Testosterone! that through its own combination of sugar-rush pop and off-putting, garish abrasiveness manages to capture the hyperactive brainfog of adolescence. It's an honestly great trick--something that you can only pull off when you have some distance from your actual teen years, ironically--and of the things that pop music is great for, because listening to stuff like this helps you understand where you come from.

And it's only 32 minutes long! When the semester starts up again I am totally biking to this!

RANKING: 1 of 6

Gagner la sortie (2022)

8/10

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

TYPE OF POP: pop

REVIEW: Le Aids takes an eight-year break and comes back with what might be a farewell album? Honestly, I'm not good enough at French to know what's going on ever. But this is in some ways a look back at everything they've done, from ukuleles to guitar feedback to retro-synth dance music, again from the perspective of maturity--the wisdom of maturity, and the comfort of maturity, and also the discomfort of maturity, the realization that all the things you were worried about didn't matter and you should have been worried about completely different things. Or at least that's how it was for me.

RANKING: 3 of 6

Overall Ranking & Final Thoughts

1. The Lost Opportunities to Keep Quiet
2. Cum to Get Her
3. The "Not Enough Too Much EP"
4. Gagner la sortie
5. I Like Major Chords... Very Much
6. The Dark Ages

(something in french again)

Le Reste - All Is Weird and Ridiculous (2025)

8/10

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

don't call it a comeback!

TYPE OF POP: piano

REVIEW: As the artist formerly known as Le Aids states: "un nouveau nom. un premier album. de la musique. encore." But why? Well, for very sad reasons: this album was prompted by the death of his long-term partner. And specifically, by the seeming pointlessness of going on--basically, doing anything at all--with the knowledge that something like that can just happen.

But I am very glad that he did go on, because this is a very good album. This is some very classic piano-based pop music--my immediate point of comparison was Randy Newman, maybe because a lot of this sounds so embittered, but I also hear Brian Wilson, Burt Bacharach, Carole King, etc. etc. There's also a not-insignificant amount of britpop here--"Going Oblique" sounds like Separations-era Pulp, and also when he sings in English this guy really sounds like Damon Albarn. Best track, though, is the album closer "New World Now"--when you hear an electric guitar, for the first time on the record, it feels so good, and the combination of dancey new wave and hippie psych-pop is just wonderful.

And that track is about the actual importance of going on, which is the conclusion we all must eventually come to.

RANKING: 2 of 2

Le Reste - Bleak Moments (2026)

9/10

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

TYPE OF POP: progressive

REVIEW: And here is Le Reste née Aids, going on. This is, more than anything else, just a very electic album, touching on pretty much every style that M. Reste has worked with in the past--classic piano-pop, nervy dance-punk, hippie psych-pop, britpop (he is still singing in that fake British accent), etc. There's even a song in French! And that makes sense, on a conceptual level, because so much of this album is about embracing the, well, the "bleak moments" of life while also accepting that they're just part of what existence is about.

RANKING: 1 of 2

Overall Ranking & Final Thoughts

1. All Is Weird and Ridiculous
2. Bleak Moments

(something in french again, again)