Style: Post-Progressive Rock, Alternative Rock, Post-Rock, Cinematic Rock (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Porcupine Tree, The Pineapple Thief, later Riverside, Soen, Alcest
Country: France
Release date: 31 October 2025

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A streetlight in the distance glows weakly behind a thick curtain of mist. On the slick cobblestones, your heels clack-clack-clack, echoing down the empty alleyway, where windowless concrete forms a featureless canyon in black and white. At the cross-street, you spot a metal sign affixed to the corner of a building: “Rue Post-Rock”; along the other direction: “Place du Rock Cinématique”. The sad café on the corner has a live band, full of sad-looking musicians. You sadly sit down and order a sad café crème and a sad croissant from the sad waitress. The band begins to play.

Grey skies, brutalist architecture, black and white photography… not all post- or cinematic rock falls into this aesthetic, but a whole lot of it does. Especially recently. Especially in France. (Ça va, guys, are you okay?) Toulouse’s Esthesis follow this trend with their ironically-titled latest album Out of Step. Though they sing in English, their angst is as French as it gets.

Out of Step is a wonderfully dark, melodic piece of work. Tracks like “Connection” and “City Lights” use almost-whispered, lightly distorted vocals and eerie keys to conjure an austere fog which lumbers around and between the other instruments. Occasionally, that fog solidifies into a screen of fuzzy noise, like discovering a wall while reaching around a dark room. Long, trudging tracks like “The Storm”, the eleven-minute album closer, evoke a strong feeling of unsettledness, a liminal uncertainty, an existential angst. On most albums, interlude tracks don’t add much to the experience as a whole, but on Out of Step, “Fractured #1” and “Fractured #2” break the album into thirds, compounding this sense of vulnerable irresolution.

A few rays of light manage to punch holes through this largely depressive blackout curtain created by Out of Step. The opening track, “Connection”, for example, features whistling. More so than sung vocals, this (perhaps the most) primitive form of music-making tethers the listener to our common humanity, saying “yes, this is bleak, but we are here together, we will get through this together”. The lyrics of the title track similarly empathize with a listener who feels disconnected from society at large: “I just think I’m out of step with the world. I don’t feel like I belong anywhere.” Although Esthesis don’t play much with rhythm and meter, there are a few rhythmic flourishes in “Out of Step”, as well—a little nudge-nudge-wink-wink to the track title. It’s by far the heaviest track on this album, as well: those waves of synths, tom-heavy thumping drums, and punchy bass in the midsection of this song propel it forward. But if you’re in the earlier stages of grief and looking for a soundtrack for your feelings, Out of Step ain’t it: we’ve moved past anger and are solidly in depression territory with this one.

More than anything, Out of Step sounds like a cry for help. Trying to imagine getting into the headspace to compose this album takes me back to some of the darkest times of my own life. Stuck in a dead-end job, with nothing on the horizon, walking alone through the streets of a dark city, surrounded by oppressively lonely humanity. Out of Step paints a sombre, despondent picture, punctuated occasionally by brief moments of beauty—the musical equivalent of a fragile emotional state. Is this what living in Toulouse is like? Remind me to never visit.

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Recommended Tracks: Out of Step, Circus
You may also like: Bruit ≤, Ozul, Midnight Jazz Club, Berlin Heart, early SOHN
Final verdict: 7/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram

Label: Misty Tones

Esthesis is:
– Aurélien Goude (vocals, keyboards, drums and FX programming)
– Arnaud Nicolau (drums, FX programming)
– Marc Anguill (bass guitar)
– Rémi Geyer (lead guitar)
– Mathilde Collet (backing vocals on “The Frame”, “Circus”, “The Storm”)