Every previous album by the radiant and heavy French trio SLIFT—brothers Jean and Rémi Fossat and drummer Canek Flores, a friend since high school - has been a fantasia—a composite of genres and forms that allowed the band to improvise, to jam on themes until they seemed to spiral together into space. But, in a bit of intentional irony, SLIFT’s fourth album is called Fantasia without actually being one. It is, instead, their leanest and most direct record, a pointed saga about overcoming international upheaval delivered by a band bearing down without wasting a second. SLIFT didn’t want to lose the message by playing too much. They’re preparing for a battle they think we can still win.

As Jean Fossat wrote the core of Fantasia, he thought a lot about Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentinian author whose fiction deftly wove elements of magic and surreality into places and plots that almost felt real. (SLIFT even borrowed the song title “Orbis Tertius” from Borges.) Fantasia, then, is an imagined town plagued by a sense of unknowing and xenophobia, of trying to eliminate anything that disrupts the accepted order. The town comes into focus on “Corrupted Sky,” where Fossat’s narrator tries to dodge doom upon arriving there. Hope starts to emerge during the record’s back half, as people start to remember that they are more than their society’s oppressive uniformity. These eight songs, then, are about trusting in the power to fight back, however hidden it may seem.

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