Franco-American comedelirium

Turning old-time storytelling into a fine art through their music, Moriarty reaches back to the deep American South of the 1930s, with added elements of jazz, blues, country and Russian taiga. They're a delightfully contrary outfit.

They're also the closest thing you'll find to French Americana. A colorful five-piece with a proclivity for dressing up as Prohibition-era outlaws, the band members were all born in France but have American parentage. The inspiration for their name comes from Dean Moriarty, the stand-in for real-life rebel Neal Cassady in Jack Kerouac's cult novel On The Road.

"The character of Dean Moriarty is a whole other universe that fascinates us," says double bass player Stephan Zimmerli, also known as Zim.

Harmonica player Thomas Puechavy finds another role model in one of Georges Perec's characters from his acclaimed postmodernist novel La Vie mode d'emploi (Life: A User's Manual). "There's a character called Bartlebooth," enthuses Puechavy, "who consumes his entire lifetime with an absurd project."

Moriarty may not have taken to painting seascapes around the world like Bartlebooth, but the band has obviously embraced his fondness for traveling. Sharing the same record label as France's first lady, Carla Bruni, they released their debut full-length album, Gee Whiz But This Is a Lonesome Town, on Naive Records in 2008. It seemed a casual deal at first, but, after the album went gold in France and sold more than 125,000 copies worldwide, Moriarty was suddenly a band very much in demand.

Lonesome harmonica, guitar, banjo, piano, dobro, Hammond organ, bass, drums, fiddle and spoons are just some of the instruments put to good use on Gee Whiz. There's wit, irony, melancholy, plenty of bohemian attitude and moments that make you want to yell out "Yee-haw!" Explaining the experimental nature of Moriarty's music, Zim reveals, "The band is made up of individuals, and, as individuals, we have many different tastes and backgrounds. So when one listens to Lightnin' Hopkins, the other one bugs him by playing The Cure."

The choice of instruments can be similarly eclectic. "Sometimes, when we're in the kitchen, [lead singer] Rosemary picks up two spoons to play with," adds Puechavy. "Sometimes, when we're traveling, Arthur [guitar and piano] uses his great-uncle's suitcase to pound on."

One of the album's standout tracks, "Jimmy," is fairly representative of what the band is about. "Jimmy won't you please come home / Where the grass is green and the buffaloes roam?" Rosemary sings in a voice that's not too far away from Joan Baez's. But then eyebrows are raised with the repeated closing lines, "If you remember you're a gnome / Buffaloland will be your home." (She also mentions buffalo piss, but there's no room for analysis here.)

"Private Lily" is another crowd-pleaser, telling the story of 19-year-old Lily, who, without money to study or a boyfriend, decides to join the army and go to war. How sad is that?

But the quirkiness doesn't stop there. Moriarty recently recorded a cover version of Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence," simply because they didn't like the original. The band also added a surrealist twist to a popular fairy tale with their release earlier this year, Le veritable histoire du Chat Botte (The Lost Scenes of Puss in Boots). And, if that wasn't enough, their habit of performing in unusual places is becoming increasingly bizarre, with recent gigs taking place at Dublin Docks, a ruined castle in Tuscany, a prison and a mental institution.  

By those standards, Akropolis seems downright normal. But that doesn't mean Moriarty will be doing a normal show here. Asked what Prague concertgoers can expect, Puechavy promises "tremendous amounts of blood, sweat and tears, and then suddenly sweet tender love."   

The plot thickens.

James Scanlon can be reached at
features@praguepost.com