Ulrich T. Does Charles T.

Even the good old Deutsche Grammophon label – once home of Herbert von Karajan, Daniel Barenboim, or Claudio Abbado – doesn’t offer the same quality choice anymore. Meanwhile, they have broadened their product range a bit: Recently they signed Ulrich Tukur, German tv cop for Europe’s probably worst crime show Tatort and a grandmaster of the overacting art, and produced his song album Mezzanotte, which contains a lovely duet with 90-years-old German movie legend Margot Hielscher, an unscrupulous raping of Friedrich Hollaender’s wonderful and immortal Illusions, and even two French numbers, one of which is a stiff and stilted carnival version of Charles Trenet’s nonchalantly charming 1939 chanson Le soleil et la lune. And history is repeating: In 1940, German troops did to France what Tukur is doing to Trenet in 2010.

Ulrich Tukur – Le soleil et la lune

Melissmell

  • Posted on 15/10/2010
  • /Under Musique

Raised in the Ardèche, named after etheric oils her grandmother used, Melissmell debuts with an EP that features a rework of the French national anthem. Called Aux Armes. Any Gainsbourg-fan would wanna know what she did with it. I’d say she Raphael-ized it, added dramatic strings, marching band-drums and musical drop-downs (I mean: the music comes and goes), not unlike Raphael did on his majestic Caravane album. There’s a Brel-influence there as well. And yes, she quotes those immortal words Serge uttered: ‘Aux Armes etcaetera’. Serge remixed Rouget de Lisles anthem as a statement about integration (in the late 70s, mind you): you’re really a part of the state if you know the national hymn so well, you can remix it the way you like it. Still powerful, methinks. Melissmell was trained as a graphic designer but drifted into the music. No surprise for a girl who could sing before she could speak. On her album she worked with some big French guns, but I heard only the EP. Not a fragile fille, more a girl with big lungs and big plans. See a nice acoustic session here.

Mellissmell – Aux armes

Cilla K, Ntjam Rosie

  • Posted on 14/10/2010
  • /Under Musique

Words that are overused on this blog are probably ‘gorgeous’, ‘sensual’, ‘sexy’ and ‘fragile’. The first three apply to Cilla K and Ntjam Rosie. But fragile, no. Both black singers have a French-colonial background (Guadaloupe, Cameroon) and they make gritty, urban music with futuristic touches. Three words that are very underused on this blog. Which is a bit of shame really, ’cause I’m into (modern) soul and funk as much as I’m into soft-sighing French blondes. Cilla K (pictured) worked with some big names in urban music, on her debut-album Fine Line is one track partly in French. One of the strongest tracks, I think. See a great video of another of Cilla’s songs here.
Ntjam Rosie now lives in Rotterdam and just released her second album Elle. Like on her debut there are a few songs in French, but no more tracks in local dialect. Instead, she added a lot more soul, plus world reknown flautista Ronald Snijders. In L’Amour she gets help from Esperanzah from Numaads.

Cilla K – Demain
Ntjam Rosie & Esperanzah – L’Amour

Cathy Claret

  • Posted on 13/10/2010
  • /Under Musique

Blonde, beautiful, Brigitte Bardot-lookalike, born in Nimes, relocated to Spain and some sort of icon since the 80s when her records were released by Les disques du Crépuscule – meet Cathy Claret. The last time we’ve heard from her was three years ago, all of a sudden there’s a new single. Chocolat is partly in French, partly in Spanish and sung deliciously off-key with that unresistable Lolita-voice of hers. The other track on this single is a rap (!) in Spanish, and so godawful that I promise to post it if this blog ever calls it quits, to scare you all off. Can’t figure out if a new album is in the works as well, but I guess there is. Let’s pray it includes a lot of songs like this one.

Cathy Claret – Chocolat

Different Class Radio

  • Posted on 13/10/2010
  • /Under Podcast

If you want to hear me murder the English language whilst talking about this blog and fragile French girls, be sure to check this month’s edition of Different Class Radio. An excellent English online radioshow that plays excellent music, including French pop. Go HERE.

FS Rerun: Philippe Leroy

  • Posted on 12/10/2010
  • /Under Musique

Mais non, this ain’t the actor Philippe Leroy, famous for his roles in Le Trou or Milano Calibro 9. According to this YouTube video, we can gather that French singer Philippe Leroy bleached his mane somewhere along the way and transformed into an artist with a quite particular clothing style, peculiar behaviour, and a haircut that tells stories from a trailer park only the boldest coiffeurs would dare to enter. Before Philippe went there, he looked (see right) pretty much like the guy who stole my sister’s bra at the youth hostel in Antibes as a souvenir, and recorded the French version of The Rubettes’ smash hit Tonight. Some people actually had sex while listening to it.

Philippe Leroy – Ce soir

The Rubettes original, also from 1974, remains a charming bubblegum-meets-glam gem. Twenty-five years later, British intellectuals The Auteurs paid tribute to The Rubettes with one of the finest pop songs of the 90s.

Rubettes – Tonight

Auteurs – The Rubettes

Melody Gardot

  • Posted on 12/10/2010
  • /Under Musique

I’m not exactly an admirer of those after-hours sound smoothies that are sold as ‚vocal jazz’ nowadays. Super-successful Melody Gardot, certainly not French, but a native of the Garden State New Jersey, doubtlessly belongs to that fraction as well, doing more smug’n’snug cuddle harmonies for them latte macchiato sippers who also can’t get enough of that dinner muzak zombification a.k.a. Till Brönner. But revisiting Gardot’s 2009 album My One and Only Thrill – now out as a new edition with bonus remixes –, I must admit that Melody’s self-written Les Etoiles has class, groove, and tendresse, and feels a bit like a missing link between Peggy Lee, Bud Shank’s cool jazz meets easy listening sauce and the nocturne bossa swing of Coralie Cléments Salle des pas perdus. Plus a charming vibraphone, too.

Melody Gardot – Les etoiles

Lisa Hannigan covering Air

  • Posted on 12/10/2010
  • /Under Musique

Playground Love, the theme-song from The Virgin Suicides, is covered by the beautiful and fragile Lisa Hannigan. You know, the girl who sang Nine Crimes with Damien Rice, one of those songs I turn off when it comes on the car stereo because I can’t drive all misty-eyed. She recorded Playground Love, written by Air and sang by the guy from Phoenix, for Saturday Sessions, a BBC radio-show hosted by Dermot O’Leary. The second compilation with sessions (various covers, stripped versions) is out now. Yes, this is not a French song, but an Air-cover, from a great movie by a great director, there is always room for that on this blog.

Lisa Hannigan – Playground Love

Marchet & Birkin

  • Posted on 12/10/2010
  • /Under Musique

Jane Birkin (pictured) and Florent Marchet playing distant lovers in a song from the new (third) Florent Marchet, named after the airport Roissy. Or the chateau from Histoire d’O – my guess is that Florent’s playing with both meanings. Could be me, though. Florent first blipped on my radar thanks of Tous Pareil (see video  here, without the female voice alas) from his debut. He writes strong, atmospheric rocksongs, on the new album he adds some electronics that make him sound a little like New Order. There’s even an instrumental track on Courchevel. His voice is in the same hoarse category as Cali (and Ridan, and Tetard, and Patxi, you know the type). Makes you wonder if the French only like one type of male, and one type of female voice. But that’s probably a cliché.

Florent Marchet & Jane Birkin – Roissy

In Bed with Gaelle

  • Posted on 11/10/2010
  • /Under Musique

On Yann Tiersen’s brand-new sixth studio album, you will find very few traces of the film composer who decorated Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain with sweet Gallic piano melancholia in 2001. Dust Lane, recorded on the small island of Quessant near the coast of Britanny – also home of the Quessant or Breton Dwarf, one of the smallest breeds of sheep in the world – with the assistance of Gravenhurst drummer Dave Collingwood and Jonathan Morali of Syd Matters, might be Tiersen’s most mature album to date, oscillating between morphing synthesizer soundscapes, spiritual chaos, and multi-layered contemplation. Gorgeous climax of the forever changing moods of Dust Lane is Fuck Me, a duet with Breton singer Gaelle Kerrien, evolving from a solemn folk tune into a somewhat Bowie-esque, guitar-driven hymn of sex and cinemascope innocence: We need to live it. Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, and make me come again.

Yann Tiersen w/ Gaelle Kerrien – Fuck Me

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