Slift: Fantasia
(Sub Pop)
LP | CD | DL
Out 5th of June, 2026
4.5 out of 5.0 stars
On their fourth album, Slift revel in a controlled chaos on an album that recognises the turmoil of our time while still maintaining hope. A dose of magical realism from France’s finest purveyors of heavy psych.
We have travelled for some time now with Slift. Eight years ago, when they blasted off to La Planète Inexplorée, they were twisting through a spiralling psych-garage sound, one that, on reflection, was merely a journey to a destination they soon reached. By the time second album Ummon came around, things had got dense and, whisper it, epic, something anyone who caught their Levitation session in 2020 would attest to for sure. Having caught the eye of Sub Pop, their third outing, Ilion, saw them rocket further out towards the stars. Eight songs in thundering cinematic scope captured many a new fan. So, it begs the question, where exactly will we find this adventurous Toulouse trio on their fourth album, Fantasia?
While still jetting through the stars, the songs here are certainly leaner than on Ilion. Their more progressive roots have sprouted once more, bastardised and intense, leading many of the songs to harness a more hardcore edge to the chaos. That chaos, brought forth by the more free-form, jazz-like jams on which the songs are built, is exactly what makes Slift such an enjoyable listen. Like Fugazi covering a Kyuss version of a John Coltrane improv, the destination is always unknown, the sonic twists and turns always keeping you on a knife-edge, but the journey is an absolute blast.
It goes in hard, and it goes in dark with the doom-laden title track opening proceedings. While it may be leaner that their recent output, it still dives and swoops in search of a place to rest, mining post-rock, post-hardcore, post-punk, post-…something. Slift are messengers unto their own in the deft ability they have to wind you up for launch. The songs spiral and free fall, rise and crash, each orbit harnessing even greater energy to propel their music and message. It is an immense force that grips you and drags you into their jetstream.
Lyrically, frontman Jean Fossat has taken a step back from the sci-fi focus of their earlier work to ground the songs in a magical realism, influenced by the work of Argentinian writer Luis Borges. With Fossat’s voice pushed more to the fore, he crafts alternate realities to explore the very contemporary issues defining our times: xenophobia, powerlessness, and the need to fight back, the desire to make sense of the unknown. The album imagines Fantasia as an alternate place, almost real and within our grasp, yet still abstract and beyond reach; the title itself disguises the rage and pain within something more childlike.
That literary idea is nowhere clearer than on The Village. The slow build-up of the song, from a sparse, muted opening, the lyrics gradually rising with urgency, synths tumbling over one another, the drums stepping up bar by bar, to the final throat-wrenching minute of ferocity is theatricality at its finest. The influence of Borges on the concept is crystallised in the song Orbis Tertius, the title taken directly from one of the writer’s short stories. The subjective idealism of their muse is transformed, the construction of the outsider through language, symbols, and psychology, the “other” as a mental construct. Slift paint an abstract and yet real portrait of the manifestation of fear of the unknown in a song that is altogether dark and angular. The town’s downfall is predicted in the following A Storm Of Wings, a song that marries an ever-building tension with further magical realism, this time with a direct reference to Mikhail Bulgakov’s classic, The Master And Margarita.
Here comes a storm of wings!Too much dreadHas fallen on the townCat is fedWoland smile!
Despite the band wanting a leaner, more direct sound (something they admitted they found challenging, against their own nature), songs such as Day Of Execution, with its tornado guitars, still draw a line back to Ilion. More progressive and layered than much of the album, yet still trimmed down somewhat in length from the Slift of a few years ago, it is the clearest rumination here on the social disease affecting much of the world. In a society where nostalgia replaces progress, where demagogues tap into the fear of change, the song has one simple message. As the town of Fantasia closes in on itself, shuts itself out from the rest of the world, the band plead: “Remember who you are.”
For a band that set out to explore the outer limits, Slift have returned with an album that speaks directly to today’s world. It reinforces a deep need for us to regain a sense of power, a sense of control in our own lives, rather than dancing to the tune of the world’s organ grinders. As with their previous albums, it is a triumph, one that sets them up to go wherever they may please.
Want to see what is in store on their tour later this year? Check out their KEXP performance.
Slift live dates:
Dec. 8, 2026: Academy, Dublin
Dec. 10, 2026: Gorilla, Manchester
Dec. 11, 2026: Rescue Rooms, Nottingham
Dec. 12, 2026: Thekla, Bristol
Dec. 13, 2026: Islington Assembly Hall, London
FULL EUROPEAN AND US TOUR DATES HERE
Follow Slift onFacebook,Instagram, andBandcamp
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All words by Nathan Whittle. Find his Louder Than War archivehere.
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