Sciences Nouvelles, the latest album from Montreal punk band Duchess Says, sounds like a warped, 1980s Frankenstein baby. Pushed forward by the opener “Inertia,” the record spirals through a space filled with palm-muted, fuzzed out guitar and bass, and a synthesizer used to supply the most surprising melodies into what’s essentially a straightforward punk structure: all downstrokes and tight rhythm section. Songs like “Negative Thoughts” exemplify this melding through the insertion of a keyboard melody during the chorus that seems, at first listen, to be explicitly out of place.
The biggest thing Duchess Says has going for them is their adherence to the catchy rhythm-based hooks they set forth early in songs. That, and the fact that some tracks are more straightforwardly punk — guitar and bass and drums at the forefront — and others are more electronic, full of loops and ‘80s-ish synth frills which, oddly enough, all manage to come together somewhat coherently.
