Musique

Growing up on a farm in rural Burgundy, the lure of music was stronger than a life of agriculture for Clémence Freschard; at 12 she started putting on gigs in the barn. At 18 she moved to Paris where she worked in a café, meeting regular customer Andre Herman Dune, the sterling lo-fi pop genius who has worked with FS favourite Françoiz Breut. He wrote some songs for Freschard. She then decamped to New York, where she picked up an old electric guitar and started writing her own material. Now a long-time resident of Berlin, her fifth album, Boom Biddy Boom, is out on the ace UK label WIAIWYA (Where It’s At Is Where You Are) on lovely orange vinyl and from her Bandcamp in. let’s face it, marginally less lovely digital formats. The album’s sung in a great accented English, with slack guitars and sparse instrumentation. It’s lovely stuff in any language.

(Thanks Adrian for this guestpost)

New single by sweet French garagerockers The Liminanas, new album out 5-11. More on the band here.

If you know that Marc Collin produced the most recent album by Beirut-born singer Yasmine Hamdan, you understand why there’s room for her on this blog. For Monsieur Nouvelle Vague, the mastermind behind Ollano and a whole bunch of others (see an old post here) is King Midas when it comes to les filles. This new album by Yasmine is a fusion of western electronics an Arab atmospheres, just like Yasmine’s former band Soapkills (listen to a great track she re-recorded for her album). If this is Beirut by night, then it’s far from dangerous, it’s humid, sexy, tempting. This is far better than Ofra Haza or Natasha Atlas, at least in my book.
I have no clue what Yasmine’s singing about, but an expert told me ‘the songs are about what all songs are about’. But they sure don’t sound like all songs.