The Limiñanas “Faded” 2025. Limited edition red vinyl, Berreto Music/Because Music Records. Sultry psychedelic garage rock from France, chock full of collaborations including two tracks with Jon Spencer. I must have been one of the very first people to preorder it as I also received a limited to 100 7″ single. Faded is something like their 10th release since their 2010 debut. The Limiñanas remain soooo cool and their latest LP does not disappoint: it’s slinky and shimmery plus the multitude of musicians brings an excellent variety to the album. Of course my top tracks are the two Spencer songs: the laser-tinged “Space Baby” (classic Spencer yelps, growls, “Yeahs!” and silliness: “I’m floating in that tin can…”) and “Degenerate Star.” I’m also a big fan of “Prisoner of Beauty” featuring Bobby Gillespie (The Jesus & Mary Chain, Primal Scream) and the jangly Bowie-esque “Shout” featuring Rove (aka Timothée Régnier). And while my rudimentary high school level French doesn’t help much with parsing the lyrics, I also really love the French-lyric’d collaborations: “J’adore le Monde” with French singer/composer Bertrand Belin and the sexy, whispery “Catherine” sung by French singer Anna Jean (whom Discogs tells me is daughter of Nobel-prize awarded author J.M.G. Le Clezio). The Limiñanas-only tracks are pretty damn good too, especially their rendition of the classic r&b song by Richard Berry, then garage rock song popularized by the Kingsmen “Louie Louie” (and apparently the world’s most recorded rock song) that The Limiñanas somehow made luxuriously seductive – singing it in French helped – as well as the hypnotically buzzy “Autour de Chez Moi” which features both Lionel and Marie Limiñana on back-and-forth conversational vocals (though I have no clue what they’re chatting about).