Panorama

Ask me for my desert island top five songs that feature vocals from real dogs and I’d probably mention Jane’s Addiction’s “Been Caught Stealing,” Mitski’s “I’m Your Man,” Beach Boys’ “Caroline, No,” maybe Fiona Apple’s “Fetch the Bolt Cutters.” In most cases, the barking adds a touch of ambient vérité or, in Mitski’s case, impending doom: “I’ll meet judgment by the hounds,” she sings, and the hounds in question start yapping hungrily around the edges, threatening more than judgment. Now, there’s a new contender: “Plastique Couch,” the centerpiece of Panorama, the third solo album from singer and bassist Hélène Barbier. It’s a woozily entrancing kiss-off where everything sounds slightly askew, as though it were soundtracking a dream sequence in a Michel Gondry film. Wacky back-up vocals dart in and out, different after each chorus, and in the final iteration, they’re supplied by Barbier’s fluffy mountain dog, Toody, in a series of gruff barks. But Toody doesn’t sound like she’s interrupting the session or freaking out at a delivery truck. She sounds like she’s locked into the groove.

That perpetual nonchalance is key to Barbier’s wigged-out appeal. Her lyrics, though cryptic, often evoke ruptured relationships and existential malaise. But across this oddly addictive album of laconic and playful art-punk, she never loses her cool. “Pour toi, le temps n’a rien arrangé,” she purs on “Dans l’os”—that is, “For you, time hasn’t fixed anything”—but she doesn’t sound especially rattled. “Water,” the most conventional song here, tempers its icy contempt (“When you die, I won’t smile,” the singer croons) with chiming guitars that resemble Tom Verlaine at his most expressionistic. The synth-splattered “Milquetoast” is a deceptively jovial tune about being bored and wanting to go home. Barbier chants the two-syllable title over and over like it’s a new delicacy: “Milk! Toast, toast.”

Originally from France but long settled in Montreal, Barbier has carved out an unusual niche in the city. Once a member of the post-punk trio Moss Lime, she’s since founded the underground label and fanzine Celluloid Lunch with her husband, Joe Chamandy, who also plays guitar on Panorama. She isn’t the type to hog the spotlight, but she has come into her own as a commandingly odd solo artist, like if Jane Birkin wandered into post-punk clubs in the early 1980s and picked up the mic. Across these nine songs, she flits between French and English, explores jittery no-wave (“Marcel”) and minimalist art-pop (“Milquetoast,” “Weather Channel”), and collaborates with guest guitarist Meg Duffy on three songs. Some tracks, like the meandering “Lapin,” don’t quite find a groove; others, like “Plastique Couch,” have groove for miles. But Barbier’s understated charisma and ambiguity hold it all together.

The album is just 27 minutes long, but it leaves an impression thanks to the joyous peculiarity of her arrangements. Barbier constructs her songs around jagged basslines and harsh, spiky lead guitar, but she often leaves the middle end of the mix bare. The effect is most disorienting on “Marcel,” which keeps piling more and more layers of scabrous guitar onto a zigzagging bass riff, as though four different session players were all auditioning for the gig at the same time. The song’s controlled chaos reminds me of Brian Eno and David Bowie’s “accidental” recording strategies—how they made Adrian Belew play guitar to tracks he’d never heard, without specifying the key. Whether Barbier employed such strategies, I have no idea. But you get the sense she’ll go to striking lengths to make a simple song sound pleasantly off-balance—with or without the dog.