Posted by Sky | Filles Sourires

Chansons d’été (4): Arthur Honegger

Posted on 06/08/2012
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In January 1920, a Parisian journalist named Henri Collet proclaimed Les Six Francais, soon to be known as Groupe des Six, bracketing six French composers together as the avantgarde of the new decade. One of the members was then 25-year-old Arthur Honegger, who (unlike the others) admired Wagner and Debussy, and put on his kids gloves when if came to iconoclasm: »There’s no point knocking down doors you can open«, he would state 30 years later. In the summer of the same year, he wrote his ultra romantic Pastorale d’été, Poème symphonique, epigraphed by a line from Rimbaud: »J’ai embrassé l’aube d’été …« One flute, one oboe, one clarinet, one bassoon, one horn, plus strings: This is the first light of a warm summer day, and there’s few chances it will get more beautiful again.

~~Orchestre National de l’ORTF/ conducted by Jean Martignon – Pastorale d´été~~

Chansons d’été (3): James Taylor

Posted on 05/08/2012
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Long ago and far away, in a time they called the 70s, each and every girl had the same four LPs standing beside her record player: Simon & Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water, Cat Stevens’s Tea for the Tillerman, Neil Young’s Harvest, and of course James Taylor’s Sweet Baby James. Taylor, who even made it to the cover of Time magazine then, was the folk Jesus of the American soft rock scene, a tortured messiah who suffered for all the moonlight ladies that wanted to spend him comfort and lovin’ care. His probably bleakest album, 1979’s Flag, also contains the only song Taylor ever wrote in French: undeniably a fine, contemplative one with end of summer feel, actually not sounding like James Taylor, but like Jimmy Buffett in his most laidback ballad moments.

~~James Taylor – Chanson Française~~

Chansons d’été (2): Julien Baer

Posted on 04/08/2012
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Despite four excellent albums in the last fifteen years, Julien Baer remains one of the great unknown French artists. His self-titled 1997 debut, recorded in Paris, London, and Los Angeles, features lush, but never overstated arrangements, highly poetic imagery, and a poignant tenderness seldom heard in modern pop music. Similarly notable are Baer’s collaborators, among them producer Bertrand Burgalat, él Records legend and nouveau sunshine pop intellectual Louis Philippe, XTC’s Dave Gregory on guitar, plus guest star Hal Blaine, the undoubtedly most successful studio drummer & percussionist of all times, on the L.A. takes. On Juillet 66, the most outstanding song on an album full of astounding tunes, it’s Richie Thomas on drums, but the echo of the song is breathing Blaine’s spirit. He was there, having played on God Only Knows/ Wouldn’t It Be Nice, the magnificent Beach Boys 7″ released exactly the same month forty-six years ago now – so here’s summer like it’s never gonna be again.

Julien Baer – Juillet 66
Beach Boys – Wouldn’t It Be Nice
Louis Philippe – Do Not Blame It on the Summer

Chansons d’été (1): Peter Blegvad

Posted on 03/08/2012
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Same day, same label. Kew. Rhone. by John Greaves and Peter Blegvad was issued simultaneously with the Sex Pistols’ NMTB in March 1977 – art project sophistication vs. »the Bay City Rollers of outrage« (Tony Wilson), the first a commercial, the second an artistic failure. Cartoonist, singer/ songwriter and guitarist Blegvad studied with avantgardist US writer Gilbert Sorrentino, was obsessed with Marcel Duchamp, and worked with Marxist prog-rockers Henry Cow, John Zorn and XTC’s Andy Partridge. His most well-known songs might be Daughter and Blue Flower, one of his finest still is Côte d’Azur, a highly intricate and ironic chanson d’été by someone calling himself »a dilettante, a polymorphously perverse, a perpetual amateur« – doubtless an easygoing and supersexy combination.

Peter Blegvad – Côte d’Azur

C’est Magnifique

Posted on 28/04/2012
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The Guuzmeister already posted Jessica Paré’s version of Zou Bisou Bisou, as performed in AMC’s Mad Men, a couple of weeks ago. But there’s more: In season 3’s episode My Old Kentucky Home Christina Hendricks unpacks the accordion and shines with an all- too-short version of C’est Magnifique — actually not written by a Frenchman, but by quite unmatched American tunesmith Cole Porter for the 1953 Broadway super hit Can-Can.

Great Lake Dancers

Posted on 18/04/2012
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Some people have sex in unusual places. Tony Dekker, mastermind behind Canadian country folksters Great Lake Swimmers, makes music in such locations, trying to capture their energy and acoustics – churches, subway stations, castles, tiny islands named Just Room Enough or, well, a grain silo. That’s probably why Tony’s music is about as sexy as Hank Williams’ clothbrush. It’s tender though, calm and serene, alternative country all the ruggedly sensitive way. In that sense, The Great Lake Swimmers’ recent album New Wild Everywhere is surely neither new nor wild, but a respectable one, recorded for the first time in a real studio, featuring even a French language tune reminiscent of the great Iowan songwriter Greg Brown, and commemorative of those times when dancing was different in Ontario. Mind a little country waltz?

~~Great Lake Swimmers – Les Champs de Progéniture~~

Becky & Serge Go Motown

Posted on 14/04/2012
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Liverpoolian babe Rebecca Ferguson came second to some painter dude on British casting couch show X-Factor in 2011. She sang Chris Isaac’s Wicked Game then, he crooned Amy Winehouse and Roberta Flack. They must have swapped the songs inadvertently, since Becky Ferguson’s debut album Heaven is unmistakably another one in the Retro Soul Mixed With Dusty, Randy, Macy, Tracy, Amy & Adele Vein. With a difference. Although with the help of Adele collaborator Eg White, her songs are mostly self-written, and okay ones. The most remarkable one might be Mr. Bright Eyes, sounding for a few elusive déja-vu moments like Serge G. had once been a contract writer for Berry Gordy. But come to think of postmodernism and intertextuality: Probably Serge had listened to some Motown records back in 1967, too.

~~Rebecca Ferguson – Mr. Bright Eyes~~

Amours Perdues

Posted on 31/03/2012
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First sight, nice one. A compilation about the life and times of Serge & and highly underrated singer Bébé, titled Lost Loves, of course a reference to Gainsbourg’s Les Amours Perdues. Actually, and we’re in a mild mood today, the album is a bit of a miss: The ten Gainsbourg-sung titles that open the album have nothing to do with BB, and the „cool sounds from her hot scenes“ rehash some pseudo-swelty jazz instros from BB’s early movies; including no vocals, of course, and though the bag includes Brigitte’s version of Sidonie, issued as a flexi disc by Sonorama magazine in 1961, it’s not even a Gainsbourg song, spelled Sidone here – probably the final indicator that the guys at Cherry Red Records already had lost love and interest when they cobbled this cheapo together in one and a half min, the most intriguing tune here being Isabelle Aubret’s (!) version of La chanson de Prévert. And, believe it or not, that’s really a Gainsbourg song.

Isabelle Aubret – La Chanson de Prévert
Brigitte Bardot – Sidonie

Under Mike’s Umbrella

Posted on 17/03/2012
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Ah, Françoise. Everybody had a crush on her back in the Sixties, that shy, well-bred brunette with those wistful chansons who seemed to spend all her time under her umbrella. One of her most iconic songs was Dans le Monde Entier, issued in 1965, evocating that endless Parisian rainy season once again. Of course future Wombles mastermind Mike Batt, 16 years old then, was also in love with Françoise, and Georgian-British songstress Katie Melua‘s cover of the English version, produced by Batt for her brand new album Secret Symphony, is a recollection of those cloudy days of innocence. Melua captures the mood of the tune just perfectly, though the last line now isn’t the heartbreak threnody of a young girl anymore, but the last echo of young Mike Batt’s clandestine longing: I still love you so.

~~Katie Melua – All Over the World~~

Françoise Hardy – Dans le Monde Entier
Françoise Hardy – All Over the World

Spoiler Alert

Posted on 16/03/2012
/Under Video

Don’t watch this one if you haven’t seen Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy so far. Or do. However, the brilliant end montage of Tomas Alfredson’s adaptation of the famous John le Carré novel features the full-length version of La Mer by … Julio Iglesias, catapulting the Spanish schmaltz yodeler right into the realm of Supercoolio. One that goes directly to the head.

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