Allez Vanessa!
No extensive introduction on Vanessa Contenay-Quinones here at FS anymore. Regular visitors already know the cool seduction on high heels with the beautiful, sultry voice and misty eyes for a while now. Her 60’s influenced French popmusic was already around here a few times. Same goes for the music of her band Vanessa and the O’s (about to release a new album soon too, the site stated), but we never had a topic on her first band Espiritu, with whom she recorded two albums from 1993 to 1997. The best was then yet to come.
Inbetween 2008 and 2010 Vanessa recorded several tracks for her project called Allez Pop! Some of them ended up on compilation albums like Filles Fragiles 2 and Musique Fantastique, one track (Bon Bon Bon) even made it to the OST of the action-comedy Killers with Ashton Kutcher, Tom Selleck and Katherine Heigl. So it was about time to put all the recordings together and release Allez Pop! A superb idea. The tracks are seductive, fresh, quirky and tributary of course to Gainsbourg and Bardot, Dutronc and Hardy to name but a few. An unpretentious candy with attitude. Highly recommended.
And for those who might start thinking that Vanessa can’t do any wrong… just wait and see her with a bizarre performance as Vanessa St. James in collaboration with Lou Reed (!) on a weird kinda dance version of Velvet Undergrounds ‘Sunday Morning’. Not even a sin of her youth, as this Italian show (starts at 02.30) is from 2004. But some can’t do wrong, right?
(see the video)
Vanessa Contenay-Quinones – Odyssée
Correction: Maks wrote this piece, not me. You’re one hell of a manager, Steve.
Nice one mr Guuzbourg, yes agreed re Allez Pop album, quirky, fresh, sexy, playful, seductive, sensual, langorous and lets not forget tristesse and genuinely sad and heartfelt vocals at times, this isn’t pastiche by any means this is IT! If you didn’t get enough Bardot songs written and produced by Serge (and who did??)then you best buy this album right away because it’s the closest you are ever going to get, even the french think so going by Les Inrockuptibles, both music and textes are superb..mr Gainsbourg would certainly have been intrigued..perhaps even enraptured!
Sometimes Vanessa wears too much candy-colors for my tastes, but this is a perfect album.