We Are Enfant Terrible

  • Posted on 16/12/2011
  • /Under Musique

We Are Enfant Terrible is a French electronica-driven pop band that, as they say on their site, ‘sing songs in English. But with our new EP, La vie est belle, mes enfants!, recorded last summer in the french deep country, we claim our love in french to artists that inspire us by covering and/or translating New Young Pony Club, Gainsbourg, Dutronc, Beck.’ The NYPC-song is downloadable for free via Soundcloud. But this blog is of course very interested in their take on Ces Petits Riens, originally a duet between Serge and Catherine. And, well, it’s quite good! Not sure if singer Clo Floret exaggerates the ennui in her voice, but it works.

We are enfant terrible – Ces petits riens

Cracbooms

  • Posted on 13/12/2011
  • /Under Musique

Not that many interesting, leftfield French Christmas songs this year. Alas. But new French band Cracbooms made a good cover of the old La Compagnie Créole song Bons baisers de Fort de France. Yep, it’s a Christmas song allright, yet tropical. Cracbooms gave it a Vampire Weekend-styled make over. Downloadable for free via their Bandcamp site.

Year lists (3)

  • Posted on 10/12/2011
  • /Under Musique

Mordi, he of the wonderful and inspirational Blowupdoll blog, lines up his French faves:

Here’s my French year list! It’s in no particular order and features albums and individual songs , male and female singers. It’s worth noting that Charlotte Gainsbourgs new album probably should be on this list, but I haven’t heard all of it and it’s not released here for another few days so that will probably be on next years list!

Yelle – Safari Disco Club (album)
I wasn’t that enamoured with their first album ‘pop!’ but with this new album felt more poppy, clubby, electronic and fun. I was obsessed with the album for the entire months of April/May. Favourite song ‘S’eteint Le Soleil’.

Lou Lesage – Forgotten Child (song, pictured)
Her voice on this song is near perfect – soft, with a French accent. The tune is gorgeous (so is she) – shame the album didn’t quite live up to this.

Alex Beaupain – Pourquoi Battait Mon Coeur (album)
He really deserves more success than he gets- he should be up there with the likes of Biolay. A great songwriter, great tunes. I don’t know if it’s because I emotionally associate him too much with the heartache of ‘les Chansons D’amour’ but his voice often sounds like its on the verge of sadness. Favourite song ‘Au Depart’.

Christophe Willem – Prismphonic (album)
Are you surprised he is on my list? I am! And although not every song on this album is amazing – but with help from top pop people like Richard x, Karen Poole and Isabel Guzman some of it is not bad at all. My favourite has to be ‘Jamais Du’ – I love the piano – to me that’s a quintessential French pop sound. Infact, if I had my way, all French pop songs would sound like Desireless had given birth to them.

Catherine Deneuve – C’est beau la vie (song)
Not her duet with Benjamin Biolay but the solo version she sang at the end of ‘Potiche’ really moved me – I cried! I’m still not sure why!?

Melanie Laurent – En T’attendant (album)
After reading an interview with her a few years ago where she said she was going to record an album I could not wait. After a long wait I wasn’t disappointed at all. Whether in English or French – her voice always sounded good. ‘Il Fait Gris’ is such a standout song – amazing.

L – Initiale (album)
This may be the French album of the year for me. It captivated me so much, it was hypnotic, her lyrics were interesting and her voice just gorgeous. Can’t wait to hear what’s next from her. Favourite song ‘Jalouse’.

Les Bien Aimes Soundtrack
I haven’t seen the film yet and I know it will never come close to Les Chansons D’amour but Alex Beaupain once again put his song writing talents to this soundtrack- and so it sounds like it could also be great film. Featuring Deneuve, Mastroianni and Sagnier. I love ‘ Ici Londres’ featuring Chiara Mastroianni

Covers Deluxe: Stax, No Motown

  • Posted on 08/12/2011
  • /Under Musique

Few people remember him, but from the early 70s to the mid-80s, Michel Stax was, well, maybe not a household name, but a regular guest at Québécois clubs and venues, including bell-bottoms and that certain haircut my elder sister found so irresistible then. He almost exclusively did cover versions of other huge hits, among them Moustaki’s Milord and the French version of Hurricane Smith’s Oh Babe, What Would You Say, before he turned David Lee Roth’s men’s room take on Just a Gigolo into an outlandishly phony fairground number in 1985; his last hit, and one for the catalogue of camp, revised edition. 12 years earlier, he had covered Al Kooper’s miniature opera I Can’t Quit Her in a quite futuristic adaptation – my elder sister still claims that the karaoke machine wasn’t invented then.

Michel Stax – Car je t’aime

French Teachers Only

  • Posted on 08/12/2011
  • /Under Musique

Intriguing idea, splendid concept: Every year the French embassy in Berlin, the Bureau Export and schoolbook publishers Cornelsen cooperate when issuing another volume of their FrancoMusiques compilations. The artwork of the meanwhile fourth installment in the series may be a bit run-of-the-mill, but the content offers a fine panorama of most recent French pop, featuring tracks by everybody’s darlings like Zaz and Yelle, but also smashing stuff by lesser known artists, e.g. the gorgeous melancholia of L (see mp3 below), the hypnotic electro pop of Slove, or the fulminant flow of Parisian rappers Sexion d’Assaut. Plus, the compilation is for free and can be ordered here, though – sorry, letdown of the week – only by teachers of French living in Germany. You’ll surely find a trick to snatch a copy.

L – Mes lèvres

Hot Hausfrau Entertainment

  • Posted on 07/12/2011
  • /Under Musique

Once the famous Blue Note label was home of Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, or Thelonius Monk. Nowadays, its catalogue features jazz artist impersonators like German so-called entertainer Götz Alsmann. On his new album In Paris, he covers songs by Trenet, Aznavour, Montand, and others, in some rather remarkable style: The band, featuring an extraordinarily obtrusive vibraphonist,  swings like a red hot hausfrau changing a vacuum cleaner bag, while Alsmann himself buoyantly chuckles and chortles, guffaws and giggles his way through the chansons, his personal highlight possibly being his version of Serge’s early tongue-in-cheek ditty Cha Cha Cha du Loup – now sounding like Chester the Molester on the loose at some German primary school.

Götz Alsmann – Der Wolf tanzt Cha-Cha-Cha

Je t’aime

  • Posted on 06/12/2011
  • /Under Musique

Longtime FOFS (Friend of Filles Sourires) Roger Grund send me a rework of the ole’ Je t’aime…moi non plus, mixed with some klezmer-clarinet. It could be the basis of a ‘sick love song’, as Roger puts it. ‘I will consider to add any vocalist’, he adds. And: ‘Particle was compiled in search of the definitive rhythm guitar and is dedicated to the magik of Arthur Greenslade, Serge Gainsbourg, Michel Houellebecq and the now stagnant Circus Contraption.’
So there. Work in progress. Let’s see what happens next.

Roger Grund – Particle

Illustration stolen from HERE

Charlotte Gainsbourg

  • Posted on 05/12/2011
  • /Under Musique

Call it a collection of leftovers, a cash-in for Christmas, fact of the matter is that Charlotte’s bric-a-brac of live-tracks and inédits makes a bigger impression than Lulu Gainsbourgs covers of their dad’s work. Sure, there are flaws. None of Serge’s songs among the live-tracks, I’d have loved her version of Hôtel Particulier, which she played on the tour. Charlotte is a limited singer, and at times has trouble getting heard over the loud band. But her version of Dylan’s Just Like a Woman is great, and so is In the End. We’ve heard a lot of the studio-songs already, the astounding White Telephone, the clunky Terrible Angels and Memoir, written with Conor from Villagers. Paradisco is in the vein of Beck’s more danceable tracks, All the Rain sounds like a demo of Trick Pony and Out of Touch (with Noah & the Whale) is pure fragile gold. Stand out track is Anna, with it’s ploppin’ bass and the Je suis venue te dire-like melody you can tell the title isn’t just a reference to the movie with Serge. Left overs usually don’t taste this good.

Charlotte Gainsbourg – Anna

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