Love the Future

Chester French | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (April 21, 2009)
• Original Release Date: 2009
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Interscope Records
• ASIN: B001UGIS7A
• In-Print Editions: Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #124,734 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Introduction

2. C'Mon (On My Own)

3. Bebe Buell

4. String Interlude

5. The Jimmy Choos

6. Time to Unwind

7. Fingers

8. Country Interlude

9. Beneath the Veil

10. Neal

11. Not Over You

12. She Loves Everybody

13. Sleep

Editorial Reviews

A they, not a he, consisting of young friends D.A. Wallach and Max Drummey, CHESTER FRENCH seeks to prove that pop music can be at once challenging and accessible. And with the bracing, involving and always-surprising set of pop-art songs on their debut album Love the Future, the duo has made a bold statement that's as delightful as it is ambitious, an album informed by a great wealth of music that is poised to break barriers and set new standards. Chester French's world is a musical universe in which everything's in play. The glorious "She Loves Everybody" mixes sensibilities equally drawing on Motown and power-pop. "Beneath the Veil" throws country twists into hip-hop aesthetics. "Neal" has echoes of swing, hip-hop and rock - with a guitar break paying tribute to the genius and magic fingers of Les Paul. And "Fingers" is just your basic orchestral-pop with, you know, a lap steel solo. There's a curtain-raising "Introduction," and a couple transition pieces ("The String Interlude" and "Country Interlude") to help tie it all together and stress that this is, overall, far more than just a collection of songs, but a whole statement.

"We were trying to make the album an album," Drummey says. "What we tried to do is make something musically diverse but also unified. And we did the best job of that ever in the history of music."

Don't just take it from him. The band has already been lauded by the press with features such as Spin's Who's Next `08 and Rolling Stone's Artists To Watch. And take it from no less than Pharrell Williams, who signed the unclassifiable duo to his Star Trak/Interscope label after an early copy of the album, recorded by the two largely in a dorm basement studio while they were students at Harvard, was passed from them to his engineer, Drew Coleman.

"It's been a long time since I've heard a project teeming with this sort of musicality and originality," says Williams, the phenomenal artist/producer/trailblazer of Neptunes, N.E.R.D. and so-much-else fame. "You're going to watch history unfold with these guys. I feel it in my gut." That works for Wallach and Drummey, who trace an aesthetic lineage from Beethoven to Brian Wilson, from Les Paul to Prince to, well, Pharrell Williams. They see walls coming down with a new generation inspired by innovative artists like Gnarls Barkley and OutKast.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pop in the best sense of the word, April 24, 2009

By 

Laura - See all my reviews

This review is from: Love the Future (Audio CD)

I usually listen to a lot of rock, but I happened across Chester French last year, and I thought the songs on their myspace were great.

This album definitely does not disappoint at all. I don't liek the pop on the radio, but this music is pop like The Beatles and The Beach Boys. It is beautifully crafted. D.A. and Max put a lot of thought into what instruments and sounds to use, and it all comes together well. I also like the hip-hop influence and how adventurous the songs can, along with how extrememly catchy they are. I can' stop humming Neal and Not Over You.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A debut that doesn't disappoint, April 26, 2009

By 

Julie "youneedabiscuit" (LOS ANGELES, US, Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Love The Future (Exclusive Amazon MP3 Version) (MP3 Download)

I came across Chester French in the magazine Nylon. (Peaches Geldof, one of Nylon's contributors, is Max Drummey's ex-wife and could be the "peach" that he slyly references as being "hung up again on a peach" in track 11 Not Over You) I assumed that they would be a litle too precocious, too cheeky monkey, a little too death by irony. (It should be noted that my ideas of what's good in music are old enough to buy their own liquor.) But I downloaded their free song "She Loves Everybody" off of Amazon and was surprised that I really liked it. I took a chance on their full length debut and found it equally great- it's original and fresh. I like how they use electronica elements in some songs, early Beatles stylings (as other reviewers have mentioned) in a couple tracks, and more "traditional" sounds such as a Latin beat in their introduction and a country feel in my personal favorite, Beneath the Veil, trk 9. Take it for a spin, you may be as surprised and delighted as I was.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not Impressed, May 30, 2009

By 

L. Duong "francophone" (St. Louis, MO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Love the Future (Audio CD)

In listening to this album, I was taken not only by its a lack of originality, but more significantly, its lack of heart. Hailing from Harvard, the story behind this duo may make for a good headline, but this media ploy may prove detrimental as their music does not reflect well on that institution's intellectual integrity. What you hear in these 13 songs is not artistic ingenuity but a forced amalgam of brash sounds that neither please nor inspire. The lyrics settle for easy rhymes that have been recycled in countless form, as in "don't want to be your man, just want to hold your hand, but I don't think you understand." These songs are not crafted to pull one's emotions or even to engage the imagination; rather, they offer a short ride that is as quick as it is disposable. In the end, this effort is a collection of songs that are slick, incohesive and, ultimately, irrelevant.