Sébastien Tellier – ‘Kiss The Beast’ album review: French sexiness can only mask so much
Listen, I am aware this is going to sound very small-minded of me. But I think my continental horizons have always been squandered by the traumatic memories of the French teacher I had in school, who absolutely hated my guts.
The Skinny: That story might not seem like it has any bearing on my life now, but the point is that I was so scared by the experience of vocabulary exercises and pronunciation that I was permanently put off learning languages, when maybe I shouldn’t have. In any case, I had high hopes that Sébastien Tellier’s latest album, Kiss The Beast, might help me fall back in love.
Unfortunately, the record, due for release on January 30th via Because Music, did anything but that – in all honesty, it probably made it worse. Before you completely cast me off, that is not because of the language barrier. It’s because the album feels so haphazard, so bizarre, so deranged that the lack of verbal comprehension becomes the least of your worries.
There is the caveat that Tellier has always been an experimental artist, and with Kiss The Beast marking his first new music in some six years, the approach was always bound to be bold. But it seems that in the process of trying to achieve this, the lines between pop accessibility, originality, and downright cheesiness have become irreparably tangled.
The record starts out with the titular ‘Kiss The Beast’, a palatable if plain example of synth pop. But soon after, by the time you reach ‘Mouton’, you’ve got such overly sultry vocals that it would even make Serge Gainsbourg cringe, completed aptly with sheep noises in the background, for some reason which isn’t exactly clear apart from the name of the song.
I fear I am running the risk of only pedalling out some very surface-level analysis here, but assuming the hat of the average listener, the album is simply too confusing to really get your head around. Indeed, I realise that this may well have been Tellier’s artistic aim all along, but when your goal is to essentially alienate the audience, are you ever really going to be all that successful?
Without wishing to pour salt in the wound any further, the one area where Kiss The Beast does pick up some points is in its collaborations, namely with Slayyyter and Nile Rodgers on ‘Thrill of the Night’, and Kid Cudi on ‘Amnesia’. It’s not that either of these tracks is particularly groundbreaking, but a respective foray into disco and R&B at least makes you feel as though you’re not about to go completely insane.
It’s a flippant thing to say, granted, but I can’t shake the feeling that if an amateur artist were to pick a whole smattering of genres that took their fancy, try their best sexy French accent, and throw in the occasional sound effect for good measure, they would come up with a result not so far away from this. Why not give it a go? There’s clearly nothing to lose.
The Verdict: Tellier should be commended for his evidently boundless mind and creative energy when it comes to making music, but sometimes the essence of a good album is found in learning when to rein things in a bit.
Going all out with exuberance and continental air sounds like a great idea in theory, but when it yields results as messy as Kiss The Beast, it’s maybe time to head back to the drawing board.
Release date: January 30th, 2026 | Producer: Victor Le Masne/SebastiAn/Daniel Stricker/Oscar Holter | Label: Because Music
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