Review
Genre and Mood
Her introduced themselves with Quite Like, and it already sounds like the band the French Wikipedia describes: pop-soul with a rock edge, made in Rennes. Sodwee called it a sensual, soulful number with great simple lyrics; it is sultry and romantic, a song about women sung with obvious admiration.
Song Summary
In April 2015 Victor Solf and Simon Carpentier, newly formed as Her, put Quite Like on SoundCloud as their first single, ahead of their first concert, at the Ubu in Rennes. A single release followed in June 2015, and the song then appeared on Tape #1 in January 2016 and, three years after its first appearance, on the duo’s only album, Her, released by Barclay on 30 March 2018. It runs four minutes and five seconds. Hearing Aid Magazine heard its lyrics as zesty and undeniably French, a love poem that captures the band’s feminine influence and an appreciation of women in their entirety.
Musical Breakdown
No review walks through Quite Like section by section, so this review keeps to what is documented. The credits describe a played band rather than a laptop: Solf on vocals and keyboards, Carpentier on guitar and vocals, Louis Kuipers on guitar, Thomas Clairice on bass and Paul Rosi on drums, produced by Her with Michael Declerck. Around it on the album, Hearing Aid heard soft, sensual jazz paired with punchier rock and R&B. Listen for the two voices over the band.
Concepts in Focus
Quite Like had a music video from the start: the 2015 clip directed by Raphaël Frydman. Two years later Konbini still remembered it as the clip with which Her had first charmed its audience, a sign of how long a first video can stay with listeners.
It also lives on as a live recording. Her Live Tape #1 of 2016 carries a live Quite Like of about the same length as the studio track, and Her Live Tape #2 of 2017, recorded at the Gaîté Lyrique in Paris, stretches it beyond eight minutes. Compare how the same live tape opened up another song in Her, Zefire – Queens - Live At Gaité Lyrique, Paris.
Artistic Context
Solf and Carpentier met at the lycée Émile-Zola in Rennes and played for six years in The Popopopops before forming Her in April 2015. Carpentier died of cancer on 13 August 2017, at 27; the album came out the following spring, and Solf ended the project after its tour.
Impact and Reception
Quite Like and Five Minutes were the first singles that made Her known. In 2018 NME heard the album they led to as funky neo-soul shimmering in the face of tragedy. Hearing Aid thought fans of Chet Faker would appreciate Quite Like, musically and lyrically; you may well agree.
