Like Bashung

  • Posted on 02/05/2011
  • /Under Musique

Tels Alain Bashung is a just-released tribute to the great French rocker, who passed away in 2009. He left a discography that, for the non-French listener, has as much turn-ons as turn-offs. He wasn’t a fantastic singer, technically. He had, as Sky said already in the post below, a tendency for pumped up stadium-rock and yes, he was obsessed by Dylan. Yet, albums like Play Blessures, Fantaisie Militaire and Osez Joséphine are still very listenable, and songs like La nuit je mens or Madame rêve lost nothing of their emotional value. Plus, he played in a few very good videos (like Volutes). On Tels Alain Bashung, FS-faves like Keren Ann, Vanessa Paradis, M, Dionysos and Benjamin Biolay make his songs their own. No stinkers here (ok, well, Christophe maybe channels some bad stadiumrock-vibes). On the dvd that accompanies the cd, almost all artists tell melancholic stories about Bashung, his songs and their memories. Oddly, rock-trio Mustang is also featured, yet they’re not the album. Shame. Their approach to rock ‘n roll is very much in the vein of another of Bashungs heroes, Gene Vincent.

Keren Ann – Je fume pur oublier que tu bois
Alain Bashung – Je fume pour oublier que tu bois

Note from Sky’s editorial desk: I beg to differ, Guuz — Christophe’s cover of Bashung’s Alcaline has class and haute tension.

Christophe – Alcaline
Alain Bashung – Alcaline.mp3

FS Rerun: Alain Bashung

  • Posted on 01/05/2011
  • /Under Musique

When Alain Bashung hit it big in 1981 – Gaby oh Gaby was in the French charts for 54 weeks and sold a million copies –, they called him the „Johnny Hallyday de la New Wave“. Actually, the Gallic super-antistar who garnered eleven Victoires de la Musiques awards between 1985 and 2009, sounded all-too-often more like Paolo Conte merging David Bowie attitude with an unhealthy Dylan obsession, stadium rock style – including a whole lot of obnoxious Frenchican rock bummers (especially the Tom Waits/ Michel Sardou amalgam of 2008’s Bleu Pétrole), but also some significantly dazzling results, especially on 82’s Play Blessures, then teaming up with lyricist Serge Gainsbourg who probably would have liked to inflict these wounds himself: Combining lupine lamentos with No Wave splinters, this is French Rock’s Metallic K.O., with unmistakably hypnotic qualities.

Alain Bashung – J’envisage

Alain Bashung – Bistouri scalpel

Alain Bashung – Trompé d’érection

Face/ Off

  • Posted on 30/04/2011
  • /Under Musique

On his brand-new album I Wish I Was Someone Else, German singer Patrick Zimmer alias Finn employs a well-tried, though not very well-worn concept when covering mostly so-called classic radio smash hits from the 70s and 80s, Lo-fi production style. Flogging braindead horses like I Shot the Sheriff or Tina Turner’s Private Dancer bare bones folkie-style doesn’t make them the slightest bit more thrilling … in short, it’s all going nowhere in a hurry. With the exception of a quite upbeat cover of Ne dis rien, originally rendered by Serge G. and Godard favorite Anna Karina in 1967, in some studio booth Serge mistook for a boudoir again. Finn’s partner in crime is a sweetly knowing, sadly anonymous, and surely German female voice. Must be the way she walks: Who’s that girl?

Finn – Ne dis rien

Serge & Anna Karina – Ne dis rien

Try a Little Tenderness

  • Posted on 30/04/2011
  • /Under Musique

At the reception after yesterday’s royal wedding, Sir Elton John told William, Katie, and the French ambassador a fascinating story. While driving along the promenade of St. Tropez in 1980, he was so overwhelmed by a chanson on the radio of his Ferrari Testarossa that he pulled to the side of the road to listen. On the air was Janic Prevost’s synth-driven disco-pop drama J’veux d’la tendresse; Elton was so moved that he covered the song a few months later, in English as well as in French for the Gallic edition of his 1981 album The Fox. The French ambassador had to admit he wasn’t familiar with Mademoiselle Prevost, and shook his head again when Sir Elton hummed the tune for him. Slightly frowning, William grabbed his fourth champagne flûte from a lackey’s tray, while Katie said she had heard that melody before: Wasn’t it called I Will Survive?

Janic Prevost – J’veux d’la tendresse

Elton John – J’veux de la tendresse

FS Rerun: How Sad Venice Can Be

  • Posted on 27/04/2011
  • /Under Musique

Charles Aznavour? Wasn’t that the somewhat square old entertainer in the grey suit you saw on dozens of awful tv shows all those years ago? Maybe. Aznavour also was Charlie, the forlorn dude in Truffaut’s Tirez sur le pianiste (see pic) who smoked all those cigarettes like nobody had it done before, shared the bed with Michèle Mercier and Nicole Berger, and murmered some of the coolest lines ever to be uttered between love and loneliness („Silence is amorous complicity“). Sadness was also one of the keywords in his chansons, as well in Que c’est triste Venise, a sentimental kitsch masterpiece remade by the equally great Bobby Darin in 1965, U.S. grand scope showroom heartbreak style.
Charles Aznavour – Que c’est triste Venise
Bobby Darin – Venice Blue

Bonus: The Other Serge revealing where to find the gondolas of your mind.

Serge Reggiani – Venise n’est pas en Italie

Austine

  • Posted on 26/04/2011
  • /Under Musique

‘Austine is a the nicest blonde hair french girl you’ll ever meet. She’s your dream sister, lover, mother, wife and niece. After her debut album “Ouh la la la” – and after some of her tracks got picked for the Gossip Girl tv show -, she’s out with a brand new album called “Le Calendrier”. She sings en français about l’amour in colors on 12 songs (one for every month) and you’ll want to laugh, scream, cry, twist and shout with her.’ (Source)

Austine – Coup de foudre

 

 

Eva de Roovere

  • Posted on 23/04/2011
  • /Under Musique

Eva de Roovere worked with an impressive guestlist on her new album, Mijn huis (My house). Impressive if you’re Dutch, that is. Spinvis plays, wrote arrangements and a song, Thé Lau duets and Piet ‘Ozark Henry‘ Goddaer also contributed a song. Superproducer Reyn Ouwehand was at the controls. The reason she pops up on this blog is not only her delicate voice, but the fact that she sings two songs in French. By the way, this isn’t the first time this charming fille pops up on FS; she sang a song referring to Serge’s Je suis venu te dire and translated a track by FS-fave Shivaree. This time, she translated a song by Stephan Eicher (to Dutch) and sings a song written by Seb Duthoit (with whom she duetted earlier) and a track written by Kit Hain and Francois Welgryn. The latter, Chocolat, is honey to my ears. It’s an ode to various types of chocolate: ‘Un désir que je n’contrôle pas’. I’m pretty sure there’s no double entrendre here – though one never knows. When you hear Eva sing ‘Gelukkige verjaardag’ (Happy birthday) on the Will Tura-tribute, you can imagine how JFK must’ve felt when Marilyn sang her song to him.

Eva de Roovere – Chocolat
Seb Duthoit & Eva de Roovere – Jouer le jeu
Eva de Roovere – Gelukkige verjaardag

GRAM

  • Posted on 22/04/2011
  • /Under Musique

Alas, GRAM (aka Marg van Eenbergen, former singer of this band) doesn’t sing in French. But the intro-tape to her live-shows features ’69 Année Erotique’ by Serge & Jane. Her new single is very much inspired by ‘my female French collegues’, she said. I’m thinking Mareva Galanter, France Gall and  Jeanne Cherhal. That single, the summer-anthem Play Me, is a free download on her site (where it says ‘downlaod hier de single’). Higly recommended! See a live version here.

Juliette Katz

  • Posted on 20/04/2011
  • /Under Musique

She looks and sounds so much like Adele, you can understand why there’s a big buzz around Juliette Katz. This article says she’s de coup de coeur of singer Alain Souchon, that she signed with a good record label and that Sia is a guest on her album. Parts of which were recorded in New York, with producer Scott Jacoby. Albin de la Simone lend a hand, so did Bardi Johannsson. If you google her, you get this acoustic session, this coverversion and this interview (for a series of talks with ’round’ girls). First single Tout le monde sounds promising – nice groove, not too poppy, touches of Fender Rhodes piano and some Hammond. Looking forward to that album. This could be big. Photo by Steph Dray, stolen from here.

Juliette Katz – Tout le monde

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