Video
Caroline Lacaze
OK, so the favela-funk in the post below didn’t go down very well, but how ’bout:
Paris Blues
Dalida was the star, Gainsbourg the piano player. Lovely Italian-French collaboration from the completely forgotten »L’inconnue de Hongkong« (1963).
La Femme
Lo-fi lolita-surfpop heroes La Femme just released a new EP with four songs. Well, three new tracks and a rework of their underground hit ‘Sur la Planche’. The upbeat title track La Femme is sung by one of the various filles La Femme enlists to sing. A video is coming up too. According to this pic on their Facebook, it’s gonna look…different. The other songs are the Velvet Undergroundsy ‘Hypsoline’, with it’s unstable organ and tribal rhythm, that ends in a duet. There’s the bilingual ‘It’s Time To Wake Up’ that sounds like something Nini Raviolette forget to record back in the cold wave 80s. And a faster, streamlined version of Sur La Planche. It’s sleazy, it’s sexy, it’s good.
La Femme – La Femme
UPDATE:
And here’s that video, featuring La Femme and Hypsoline:
Are Girlfriends Electric?
Try to voice this name, and then try again: Evelyne Ranaivorarivony. According to Discogs, it’s the real name of Nini Raviolette, who released her one and only single in 1980: Suis-Je Normale?, a minimalist, freezoid stun-gun of a song that also opened 2004’s So Young But So Cold sampler. Now the song can be found again on Change the Beat, a brand new compilation celebrating the history of the legendary Celluloid label, still clinically cold, clinically disturbed, and still waiting for the right answer.
Nini Raviolette – Suis-Je Normale?
La Grande Sexy Sophie
Sexy Boy by Air, covered by La Grande Sophie plus strings. Ooh la la, there’s an intented pun. This cover’s from a just released EP by LGS, featuring a couple of her own songs with said string section, plus this cover. Not the first time Sexy Boy’s been redone. Apart from the almost obligatory Top 40 coverband variations (Vitamin String Quartet et al), there are a few unusual, yet good covers. A guitaristic one by Franz Ferdinand, one by youth choir Scala and an offbeat Bertrand Burgalat-reprise.
La Grande Sophie – Sexy Boy
Bertrand Burgalat – Sexy Boy
Franz Ferdinand – Sexy Boy
Scala – Sexy Boy
And 99 pink bubble bath sets for the most girlish version go to:
Lafayette + Liza Manili video
Free Jupiter remix:
C’est Chouette 2012 Yearlist (7)
Doubtless there have been more captivating years in French music, and actually, it was more a year of single songs than of entire albums. It was a sexy landscape anyway, full of signs and wonders, and populated by so many people finding their voice. Maybe for you as well.
10. Raphaël, Super-Welter. Raphaël’s Chanson pour Patrick Dewaere is one of the most heartbreaking French songs ever. It’s not on this album which obviously deals with his new faible for boxing. Now he sounds like the missing link between Lou Reed, Bowie and Bashung.
09. Françoise Hardy, L’amour Fou. Always hated her nice girl schlager attitude. She was so much older then, she’s younger than that now.
Françoise Hardy – Rendez-vous dans une autre vie
08. Olivier Bloch-Lainé, Mercredi. I listened to this one about a year ago for the first time, at Vaea’s flat in the Marais, and it has never left me since. Fuck 2012. It’s 1976, so ultra-tender like it’s never gonna be again.
07. La Femme, Paris 2012. Surfin’ the asphalt jungle, riotous, juvenile and way cool. Along with Mathieu Boogaert’s Avant que je m’ennuie and Sebastien Tellier’s Cochon Ville video of the year: Say au revoir to the Eiffel Tower.
06. Dionysos, Bird’n’Roll. Mathieu Malzieu doing the Phantom of the Time Warp Picture Show, rollercoaster sonique style, and of course the French never understood what rock’n’roll is about (me neither). The right approach for a grand spectacle.
05. Juliette Gréco, Ca se traverse est c’est beau … Direction liberté. A saint who hasn’t forgotten about la revolution. Adult cinéma including the finest hommage to proto-surrealist poet Guillaume Apollinaire ever written.
Juliette Gréco – Mirabeau sous le pont
04. Daphne, Treize chansons de Barbara. Norman Lebrecht once stated that French chanson legend Barbara was »all about the unsaid«. Daphne’s album is nothing less than a highly intimate approach to the spirit of the animal triste.
03. The Limiñanas – Crystal Anis. From Perpignan, Dept. Pyrénées-Orientales: The Limiñanas (see album cover above) throw Morricone, Gainsbourg and Fabienne Delsol in the garage blender and shake it, psychedelic sex groove style. Cool as shit, and featuring the sharpest fuzz guitar around.
02. Bertrand Burgalat – Toutes directions. Maybe BB follows one or two routes too many, but the ride includes Bardot’s Dance, an extremely infectious 70s style electro/ disco sweeper, as well as the irresistible Sous les colombes de granit, easily qualifying as one of the premier chansons of the year.
Bertrand Burgalat – Sous les colombes de granit
01. Marie-Pierre Arthur – Aux Alentours. Catchy melodies, gritty riffs and sweet, at times angelic moods. Aux Alentours is a revelation, starting in Reference Alley, but heading straight to Reinvention Boulevard in that Grand State of the Art.
Marie-Pierre Arthur – Chacun pour toi
See you in 2013.
Sky