Our gamine lady of French indie pop: That’s Françoiz Breut, kind of a brooding indie folk figurehead of the Nouvelle Scène Française and with Si tu disais actually famous in France for a few hours in the mid-90s. Fifteen years later, Françoiz has come of age, and La Chirurgie des Sentiments may be her most consistent album yet. While opening with BXL Bleuette, an hommage to her adopted hometown Bruxelles, Chirurgie’s soundscapes, oscillating between airy mournfulness and serene mirth, chanson, post-new wave and splinters of electropop, actually lead directly to the vastness of the firmament. L’astronome reminds distantly of Clare and The Reasons’ dreamy Pluton, and the sweeping Cabinet des Curiosités beams the sound of Bahia right up to the asteroid belt, combining Gallic-Brazilian weightlessness, space age pop and easy listening scope to a clandestine super hit. With Chirurgie, Françoiz has arrived, though not à Bruxelles. Finally she’s at one with the universe.
Françoiz Breut – Cabinet des Curiosités