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Les Hommes Sauvages: Vive la Trance

  • Posted on 26/10/2010
  • /Under Musique

Someone who writes a song about literary enfant terrible Jean Genet must be a friend of mine. Berlin-based guitarist Kristof Hahn actually is and did so for the brand-new, third album by Les Hommes Sauvages: „Vive la Trance“ alternates between brooding melancholy, heavy electrical storms, and impressionistic after-the-rain moments, a style Hahn and girlfriend Viola Limpet (vocals) have termed Rock’n’Roll Noir, embracing songs by Lee Hazlewood and John Cale along the way and making them completely their own. The album also features three French language originals, penned by Hahn and Gallic poet Eric LeMarechal, including the aforementioned hommage to Genet, and the serenely floating Au dessus de la ville, with a referential wink and a smile towards Blue Oyster Cult’s Don’t Fear the Reaper.

If you happen to live in Albion, you can see Monsieur Hahn, who has also played with the likes of Alex Chilton or Chris Spedding, accompanying Michael Gira and post-punk-gods The Swans at various big venues in the next days. Plus: French/ German TV channel Arte shows the documentary Mein halbes Leben/ Ma demi-vie on Oct 29, 22.20 h (Germany) and 22:45 h (France), with a fine soundtrack by Hahn and Limpet.

Photo by Stephan Schmidt. The album can be ordered via the Hommes Sauvages website.

Les Hommes Sauvages – Jean Genet

Les Hommes Sauvages – Au dessus de la ville

FS Vintage: Luiz Bonfá Meets Charles Trénet

  • Posted on 25/10/2010
  • /Under Musique

Let’s take a trip to Rio on this late Monday night. Luiz Bonfá isn’t exactly a household name, but in the 50s and 60s, he played guitar for and with Joao Gilberto, Sergio Mendes, Stan Getz, George Benson, and Frank Sinatra, and wrote Almost in Love for Elvis. In 1956, he collaborated with pianiste extraordinaire Ed(uardo) Lincoln on Noite e Dia, which contains a most easygoing and highly artistic instrumental version of Charles Trénet’s 1942 classic Que reste-t’il de nos amours. My friend Matthias knows the lyrics by heart. A perfect way to attract them filles.

Luiz Bonfá/ Ed Lincoln – Que reste-t’il de nos amours

Charles Trenet – Que reste-t’il de nos amours

Elvis – Almost in Love

Bonus: Bonfá’s biggest own composition was the bossa classic Manha de Carnaval, a favorite (not only) among French songbirds:

Marina Celeste – Manha de Carnaval

Keren Ann – Manha de Carnaval

Sylvia Telles – Manha de Carnaval

Joanie Summers w/ Laurindo Almeida – Manha de Carnaval

Claudine Longet – Manha de Carnaval

What’s the Point of Loving?

  • Posted on 17/10/2010
  • /Under Musique

On Oct 9, 1962, chanson ueber-legend Edith Piaf, who was already critically ill at the time, married French singer Théo Sarapo, twenty years younger than her. During the twelve months they had left together, they scored a huge international hit with A quoi ca sert l’amour – here’s also documented who wore the pants in their relationship. Márcio Faraco’s 2008 album Um Rio features a classy bossa version of the all-too-seldom covered song, easygoing, laid-back and finding the point in the Brazilian lightness of being.

Márcio Faraco – A quoi ca sert l’amour

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

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

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

Le Tour #5

  • Posted on 30/09/2010
  • /Under Musique

Though Thomas Bohnet, compilation svengali behind the Le Tour collections, lives in my old ’hood and still only a few kilometres away, we have never met. That may have to do with tastes. Le Tour volumes 1-4 were competently anthologized, but there always was some diminutive irritation factor. Now, with Le Tour #5, I figured it out. The assortment contains impressive and appealing stuff, like Féfé’s Clichés, Biolay’s Padam, or a minor track by FS faves Mickey 3D, but some songs here, despite being French, would easily qualify for Munich’s famous Oktoberfest: The opener, La Crise by L’Homme Parle, features German boof-tah at its very grooviest social-democratic street festival feel, and the As de Trèfle and Babylon Circus tracks are surely great, if … well, if you’re into Stimmungsmusik of this kind. I’m more into Mélanie Pain, also on Thomas’ compilation. Kind of a French Schlager as well, but a more sexy one.

Mélanie Pain – Ignore-Moi

Youn Sun Nah

  • Posted on 29/09/2010
  • /Under Musique

On her brand new seventh album Same Girl, South Korean jazz singer Youn Sun Nah covers Rodgers/ Hammerstein, Randy Newman, Metallica, and My Name is Carnival by Jackson C. Frank, the legendary white bluesman with the saddest life story you might ever read. She also interpretes La chanson d’Hélène, originally written by Philippe Sarde and Jean-Loup Dabadie for the movie Les choses de la vie, and does a remarkable job. A daring one as well, since it’s surely impossible to capture the magic Romy Schneider created with her vocals forty years ago. The male talking part, done by Michel Piccoli on the original recording, went to French romancier, musicien and plasticien Roland Brival, whose last, quite intriguing album Vol de Nuit could be described as kind of a missing link between Arthur H. and a 50s St. Germain jazz nightclub.

Youn Sun Nah/ Roland Brival – La chanson d’Hélène

Romy Schneider/ Michel Piccoli – La chanson d’Hélène

EXTRA:

FS reader Teyo d’Unux brought a sweet English language version of the chanson to our attention, the Dreammakers’ Helen’s Song. And since he labeled it a perfect tune for autumn:

Dreammakers – Helen’s Song

EVEN MORE:
Francoiz Breut – La chanson d’Hélène
Berry – La chanson d’Hélène
Get Well Soon – La chanson d’Hélène
Marina Celeste – La chanson d’Hélène

Serge’s Swimsuit Selection

  • Posted on 28/09/2010
  • /Under Video

Les filles n’ont aucun degout? Serge caresse tendresse style, when smoking was still allowed in the bar of his favorite … erm, sauna.

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