AMG Review of N'Écoutez Pas

Stewart Mason
All Music Guide

Yet another side project from a key member of Godspeed You Black Emperor! (guitarist Roger Tellier-Craig is the leader of this loosely constructed group), Fly Pan Am's first two albums sounded basically like demos and instrumental outtakes; they were often interesting, but usually terribly slight. N'Écoutez Pas, despite its self-deprecating Francophone title, is Fly Pan Am's first fully formed release, and it stands with the best work of Tellier-Craig's other band. Though at times the album's blend of found-sound tape manipulations, deadpan French vocals, wayward guitar freakouts, and droning, deliberately repetitive rhythms sounds like a collision between very early Stereolab and Sonic Youth at their most self-consciously avant, the album's two centerpiece tracks, "Autant Zig-Zag" and "Tres Tres 'Retro'," are masterpieces of tightly wound rhythms and seemingly impossible layers of processed, distorted, and lovingly screwed-with guitars. If My Bloody Valentine had gotten it together enough to record a follow-up to Loveless, it would have sounded like this.