Peppermoon, the beloved trio from Paris returns with on October 18 with a great new album. Because of the 5th birthday of this blog, I can post some new tracks. Main man Pierre Faa tells all:
Happy birthday Filles sourires ! Joyeux anniversaire… Thank you Guuz for these five years of passion, thanks for opening doors to artists like us. We owe a lot to Filles Sourires and the Filles Fragiles compilations. And we keep only good memories from the Filles Fragiles tour you set up.
Five years ago, I was just about to meet Benoît and Iris, and form the band with them. It’s been quite a slow and difficult process to get the first album released. So slow… Amazingly slow… I wish I could release albums once a year, like they did in the sixties. It’s a good rhythm, it keeps you busy and creative. No time for procrastination and debates. Anyway.
We’re now about to release our second album Les moissons d’ambre (=Amber harvests). It begins where the first one was ending : the piano piece Lonelunaire has become a little song named Larme de lune. It’s like a bridge between albums, a magic link… It also shows that we intend to explore the same territory, in terms of music and mood. It’s like visiting the same island, but at a different season. Same landscape, different light. Different colors in the sky… Nos ballades was a spring album. Les moissons d’ambre has definitely warmer shades. It feels like late summer / early autumn. Hence the title…
Hopefully, we managed to create something that is not a photocopy of Nos ballades. Iris’ singing still has that very unique innocence and freshness, mixed with new colours, new layers of sensuality. May be we have a few more electro sounds here and there – probably under Jay Alanski’s influence. I bought a kantele (a finnish harp) that you can hear in C’est la pluie qui veut ça. And lyrics wise, I tried to escape from the clichés of modern french chanson (the worst one, to me, being the obscure-meaningless-poetry-but-let’s-pretend-it-means-something-with-a-pretentious-pose). “Impressionnisme” says that happinness is never delivered in one piece – most of time, you have to connect the dots, to find the pieces of that personal jigsaw. “C’est la pluie qui veut ça” is about the memories brought back by the smells of the rain : schoolyards, old lovers… Les moissons d’ambre is about the beauty of transformation times – in nature, and in ourselves. Poupées Russes is some kind of funny Yin-Yang metaphor, saying that opposite feelings are often contained in each other (love and hate, to begin with). Gaspillées is about all the unknown family stories running in our blood… and Le refuge is about Iris’ childhood shelter, in the woods, where she hides away from Paris’ pollution and music industry people !
This new album is also more open to collaborations : our guitarist Benoît gave me the melody to Cocoon. Our friend Toshiya Fueoka, from Mondialito, composed the music of Le refuge. And my friend Ludovic Perrin wrote the lyrics to “Gaspillées”.
Now, I’m already thinking about our 3rd and last album. I see a turquoise-light green-light blue cover, something mineral, with water, crystals, air… I hope to record it next year, and then peppermoon will be over as a band. May be Iris will do solo albums, as I plan to do myself. And we’ll probably go on working together on new songs. But we definitely want peppermoon to be limited in time. There are too many bands and artists who don’t know when to stop… and that’s where I stop writing.
Enjoy the music !
Peppermoon – Poupées Russes
BONUS:
Peppermoon recorded a few covers for the Asian release of their album. This is a lovely version of a Sylvie Vartan-track
Peppermoon – La plus belle pour aller danser
Everytime I see pictures of Carly Blackman (aka Carly Sings), I think: girl, interrupted. She’s gorgeous, but in a fatalistic way. She exploits this quality in her slightly disturbing songs. That breathy voice, described before as a cross between El Perro del Mar and Inara George, makes the picture perfect, but with sharp edges. Carly was born in Ireland, went to school in Lyon and works from Paris, she writes songs in English and French. And sings the latter with a sensual, Blossom Dearie-like accent. She discovered the work of Elli & Jacno last november, she told me in an email, and decided to record the happy/sad Je t’aime tant (see video here). A new album is coming up, and should include songs arranged by J-C Vannier. A new song is out now, see the very beautiful video here. There will be French songs on that new album as well.
