I’d love to report that I know about the Dublin band Les Enfants and their 1985 album, Touché, because I found it in some used record store, buying the artifact note unheard on the basis of something about the cover or the names of the songs. Certainly it’s easy, knowing what I know about the music, to think I may have correctly guessed a song called “Shed a Tear (There You Go),” hailing from the middle of the eighties, is some lost gem of post-New Wave pop. I was rarely that bold, however, and it’s entirely possible that I’ve never even seen this release in the wild, it’s so obscure. Even though it was on Chrysalis Records, hardly a small label in the years immediately following the mega-sales of the Huey Lewis and the News album Sports, the album barely made a dent in the pop culture consciousness. It’s almost entirely faded away from the collective media memory by now, with no listing that I can find in the likes of allmusic.com. Googling “Les Enfants” and “Touché” primarily brings up French news reports on pedophiles.

I guess it’s possible that we had it at the campus radio station, but I don’t remember it. I do know that we had the Live for Ireland compilation, on which they appear, so it’s possible that I played them at one point (I doubt I went much deeper than the Pogues track or the U2 cover of “Maggie’s Farm”). As that’s doubtful, I’m sure the first time I ever heard them was when some blogger or other denizen of the web posted some of their music for free disbursement, meaning I took no more risk in acquiring it than have to suffer the split-second tedium of deleting it from my digital collection if I didn’t like it (and I suppose running afoul of the RIAA’s copyright enforcement goons, but surely they’re not tracking Les Enfants downloads all that aggressively). There was little chance of that act of elimination happening, however, as the songs are all excellent, tickling that spot in my noggin that finds the dressed up, slightly bombastic pop rock of a certain style and a certain era irresistible. Just sound a little like the Call, and I’m not going to be able to turn away.

As I noted, the band has left almost no fingerprint upon the various music obsessive websites that can amazingly track just about everything else, leaving the most devoted fans to take to forums of solitude to share information about former band members playing regular nights at suburban pubs. Thanks to some intrepid file-sharer, at least Les Enfants sit on equal footing in the randomized democracy of my iTunes. It’s a small reward, granted, but somewhere, somehow the music is getting heard and appreciated.

Listen or download –> Les Enfants, “Shed a Tear (There You Go)” Removed by request.

(Disclaimer: Since this whole post is about how difficult this band and album are to find, it probably goes without saying that I believe this record is out of print. It is shared here with the understanding that it can’t be purchased in a manner that provides due compensation to the artist and the proprietor of your favorite local, independently-owned record store. Still, I’ll gladly remove the track from my little corner of the digital world if I’m asked to do so by someone with due authority to make such a request.)