The New York Times
by Jon Pareles
The giddy, light-headed charm of the 1960’s French rock known as ye-ye is concept enough for Les Sans Culottes, a Brooklyn band that revives the style…fuzz-toned guitars, electric organ, cooing female voices and know-it-all male growls. All Les Sans Culottes had to do is bring back the psychedelic-patterned clothes, come up with stage names like Kit Kat le Noir and add some extra Franglais to savor the music’s loony essence.
The New Yorker
The Brooklyn ensemble Les Sans Culottes play raunchy faux-French rock and roll that’s both a sendup of and a tribute to the dark tunes of late-period Serge Gainsbourg and punchy ye-ye girl pop.
TimeOut New York
Brooklyn’s Les Sans Culottes have taken the whole faux-French-band thing pretty far-the group’s live shows are superenergetic, fake-multicultural events. You might not learn anything about French culcha, but you’ll probably hop around like a lunatic.
Pop ‘stache
Les Sans Culottes – ‘Pataphysical Graffiti
by Craig Bechtel
Named after the working-class revolutionaries of the French Revolution, and born 200 years after said revolution ended, this NYC septet have released their seventh full-length record, featuring 16 slices of passionate French indie pop.
But to call it that is really a misnomer. ‘Pataphysical Graffiti is a collection of rock tunes that borrows the language and instrumentation of the genre but removes the “twee” and “preciousness” that one might expect to hear from a group that does “French indie pop.”
One need not look further than the title of record for the best evidence that this is really a rock record.
‘Pataphysical Graffiti was inspired by the idea of an imaginary meeting of the Led Zeppelin double album Physical Graffiti and the French writer Alfred Jarry’s “science” of ‘pataphysics, which is almost as difficult to explain as the origin of the band’s name (apparently, the French aristocracy pre-Revolution wore fancy knee breech pants called culottes, and the working-class revolutionaries refused to wear that kind of pants).