The Seductive Skills of Miss Panton

  • Posted on 10/11/2013
  • /Under Musique

secondAnother Canadienne, a sexy redhead being heralded to sound »like the sweetest bird you’ll ever hear« – probably a bit too much promo praise, though we’re certainly dealing with a fille fragile to boot here. Diana Panton’s fourth album, To Brazil With Love, pays homage to bossa nova and the sounds of Baden Powell, Jobim or Marcos Valle, including also five French language versions of Brazilian song material, among them a welcome adaptation of Samba Saravah with vibraphone swing, and a classy reworking of the lesser known, but equally immortal Tu sais je vais t’aimer a.k.a. Eu sei que vou te amar, written in 1970 by Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes, with French lyrics by Georges Moustaki.

Diana Panton – Samba Saravah
Diana Panton – Tu sais je vais t’aimer

Moongaï

  • Posted on 08/11/2013
  • /Under Musique

She went to church just to listen to religious chants. He’s obessed with the Motown beats. She listened to her sister and grandma play the piano. He started playing jazz at a young age. She holds Brel, Brassens and Ferré in high esteem, he’s into modern hiphop. She looks like the china doll version of Florence Welch, he’s dressed as a gentleman gunfighter. Together they are Moongaï. They hail from St. Nazaire, Brittany, they’ve toured in England and India and you might now Eva from her guestspot on the C2C album. Their dreampop is reminiscent of Emilie Simon, of Mylene Farmer, of Florene & the Machine, of Gainsbourg (listen to Visage Pale, on their album Cosmofamille). Zombie is the first single, with a heavy heavy bassline and a surprising break. This could be big.

Laibach on the beat

  • Posted on 08/11/2013
  • /Under Musique

imagesAh, Mina Spiler. The She-Wolf of Laibach, that bunch of industrial totalitarianism-flirters, the Slovenian funnymen with shiny black jackboots. If women in uniform are your thing, turn to Mina. Never thought I’d ever hear her sing in French, but she does on a live version of Gainsbourgs steamy s&m-classic Love on the Beat (yep, that’s Bambou, bare-chested). Laibach recorded this version at Tate Modern. It’s from a brand new EP, new Laibach album’s coming up. See Mina in full regalia on this great Beatles-cover.

Laibach – Love on the beat

The Holydrug Couple

Apt name for this band/ duo from Santiago, Chile that transforms Serge & Jane’s Je t’aime into a spaced-out psych-popper somewhere between the realms of Procol Harum and Tame Impala. And while we’re already floating on the psychedelic pillow, don’t forget to feed your mind with the Wooden Shjips‘ version of Gainsbourg & Bardot’s Contact.

De rouille et d’os

  • Posted on 01/11/2013
  • /Under Musique

meliscoverIndeed not another sweet bedroom voice from the French doll house: The gravelly timbre of 32-year-old singer Melissmell – coming from the départment Ardèche in the southeast of France – occasionally sounds like a mixture of Gianna Nannini and Melanie Safka. The ten songs of her second album Droit dans la gueule du loup (Straight to the Lion’s Den), all written by singer/ songwriter fellow Guillaume Favray, are melancholia stuff about the animal triste, rust, rage and bones, clothed in sparse arrangements with cloudy keyboard/ piano moods and forlorn industrial-spheric ondes Martenot frequencies, especially on the Cormac McCarthy-influenced La Route. The special prize of the jury goes to Daniel Jamet for the unique guitar work. Great cover art, too.

Melissmell – Rock’n’Roll
Melissmell – La route

Say Three Hail Marys

  • Posted on 31/10/2013
  • /Under Musique

bluejeansIt’s not the first time that German Schlager star Mary Roos is singing in French. Actually, she was the darling of the whole of Paris when she performed at the Olympia in the 70s after smash hits like L’autoroute or L’animal en blue-jeans; obviously her Gallic admirers couldn’t tell Mary from Francoise Hardy, or weren’t aware of her native productions, among them the legendary Arizona Man, the very first German pop atrocity with a synthesizer, composed by Giorgio Moroder (!) and Michael Holm (who had written the soundtrack for Mark of the Devil the very same year). And she’s still at it: Her most recent album Denk was du willst features a somewhat sterile, but strangely touching version of Jacques Brel’s Ne me quitte pas. Plus a cover of Caetano Veloso’s O Leaozinho. That dame’s got taste.

Mary Roos – Ne me quitte pas
Mary Roos – O Leaozinho

Hier, aujourd’hui, demain

  • Posted on 31/10/2013
  • /Under Musique

helenanoWith her second album Azul, Belgian chanteuse/ actress Helena Noguerra was rivaling Brazilian singer Bebel Gilberto in terms of the most easygoing bossa nova lounge style record of the last decade. Now, eleven years later, Noguerra’s back again with her fifth outing Année Zéro, realized with the help of a few prominent friends, among them actress Anna Mouglalis (the Gréco from Gainsbourg: Vie Héroique), Helena’s sister Lio and Syd Matters frontman Jonathan Morali. The true work of an artiste-auteur (Noguerra wrote and composed most of the songs herself), Année Zéro is an elegant and worthwhile, though at times a bit uneven pop exploration. It also features one of the most beautiful chansons of some years to come: Appelle moi, written in collaboration with her ex-husband Katerine, a heartbreaker of a song about yesterday, today, and forever.

Helena Noguerra – Appelle Moi

The Class of ’34

  • Posted on 31/10/2013
  • /Under Musique

comedharmoFast cars, hot chicks, permanently sold-out concerts and tons of money – in 1932, the Comedian Harmonists were the best selling boygroup in the world, and they even played the Berliner Philharmonie, the German Taj Mahal of classical music, with their ironic, playful, and tenderly frivolous close-harmony songs like Lass mich dein Badewasser trinken (Let Me Drink Your Bathtub Water). Since three of the six Harmonists were so-called non-Aryans, the band was finally forced to split after the Nazi party had taken over in Germany and denounced their art as »Jewish-Marxist blubbering«. In early September of 1934, the Harmonists recorded French language versions of Cole Porter’s Night and Day and Harold Arlen’s Stormy Weather – first-rate examples of their vocal finesse, and the next-to-last melodies of a success story that ended with the melancholy, choral-like Lebewohl, gute Reise (Farewell, bon voyage) they played on their final gigs before they went separate ways forever.

Comedian Harmonists – Quand il pleut
Comedian Harmonists – Tout le jour, tout la nuit

Angèle David-Guillou

indexLondon-based Angèle is, besides a young Isabella Rosselini-look-a-like, a French-born multi-instrumentalist who just released an extremely beautiful album (Kourouma) that I’ve been playing to death the last few days. She’s the artist formerly known as Klima. She played with Piano Magic, Go! Team and French band Ginger Ale. Kourouma is a neo-classical album, with piano, wurlitzer, strings, bells and the fragile voice (sometimes) of Angèle. Atmospheric is an understatement. There are hints of Yann Tiersen, Satie and Nils Frahm. It’s chamber music, it’s ambient music, it’s very emotional, music for the film in your head. The inspiration for this album comes from novels. From this interview: ‘Typically the title track was inspired by a book by Amadou Kourouma, called “Allah Is Not Obliged”. I read a lot of African literature around the time I was composing the pieces, I love its bareness and aridity, Coetzee is a favourite of mine for instance. I wanted to translate some of that in music. I also started reading in French again, and especially the work of Marguerite Duras and Françoise Sagan. The atmosphere of these books has really inspired me.’
To be honest, I’d never heard of both Piano Magic or Klima and those bands are nothing like this new album. This is goosebumps all over. Because of her looks and her music, I wonder what David Lynch would think of her.
Listen to a preview of the album HERE. See her play live HERE. Listen to Angeles favourite music HERE

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