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Frànçois and The Narcoleptics

  • Posted on 25/01/2012
  • /Under Musique

In 2003, Frànçois Marry moved from the French west coast to Bristol where he played trumpet for bands like Movietone or Camera Obscura. Now signed to Domino Records (Franz Ferdinand, Arctic Monkeys) with his fourth album E Volo Love – caution: palindrome –, he beguiles the English Roses with a nonstop soft boy mixture somewhere between Belle & Sebastian, Paul Simon and a dazed Dominique A, opening with Les Plus Beaux, doubtless a nice 5:00 a.m. starter. Alas, the other cuddle tunes never manage to wake you up. The somnolent reviewer of British Q magazine gave Frànçois 4 stars out of 5. Actually, it’s more like un et demi étoiles when you already had your morning espresso.

Frànçois & The Atlas Mountains – Les Plus Beaux
Frànçois & The Atlas Mountains – Azrou Tune

Under the Radar (11): Cristina Branco

  • Posted on 25/01/2012
  • /Under Musique

When a literary heavyweight and Nobel Prize candidate like António Lobo Antunes writes lyrics for you, you’re playing Pop’s pantheon. On her 11th album Fado/ Tango (also released as Não Ha Só Tangos em Paris, for whatever reasons), Portuguese fadista Cristina Branco fuses the solemn Fado heritage of predecessors like Amália Rodrigues with Tango’s seductiveness, also frenchifying her spectrum with a fine cover version of Brel’s Les Désespérés, and a jaunty musical setting of L’Invitation au Voyage from Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal. High in the charts in Portugal last spring, this one found far too few listeners in the rest of the world. Bandoneons rule!

Cristina Branco – Les Désespérés
Cristina Branco – L’Invitation au Voyage

Under the Radar (7): Albrecht Mayer

  • Posted on 15/01/2012
  • /Under Musique

In Woody Allen’s latest movie Midnight in Paris, Marion Cotillard’s supersexy character claims that she wants to live in the Belle Époque, France’s Impressionist L’Age d’Or before World War I. On his recent album Bonjour Paris, German oboist Albrecht Mayer revisits those tranquil boulevards of Claude Debussy – who thought that the term Impressionism was invented by imbecile critics –, Jean Français, Vincent d’Indy, or Reynaldo Hahn (see pic), lover of Marcel Proust and probably the hero of his unfinished novel Jean Santeuil. À Chloris, mélodie sur un poème de Théophile de Viau, originally composed for voice and piano, is arranged for solo oboe on Mayer’s album, now sounding like a Baroque remembrance – a fine lyrical finale for Mayer’s album, the piece was actually written in 1913, when the Beautiful Era already had been swept away by history.

Albrecht Mayer – À Chloris

Covers Deluxe: All in the Family

  • Posted on 15/01/2012
  • /Under Musique

Calypso singer Sir Lancelot, role model of Harry Belafonte, wrote the reggae/ ska classic Shame and Scandal in the Family for Jacques Tourneur’s horror b-movie I Walked with a Zombie in 1943 – see here. Later the song was covered by Lance Percival, Peter Tosh, Kingston Trio, Trini Lopez, The Stylistics, The Blues Busters, or British ska popsters Madness, among others. Sacha Distel and Les Surfs recorded French lingo adaptations, as well as Les Gammas whose 1965 version sounds like a tourist warning not to mess around with firewater in the Carribean, including a delirious Hammond organ and a considerably cheezoid trumpet.

Merci à Monsieur Roy B.

Les Gammas – Scandale dans le famille

Le Freakiest Show: David B (French Return)

  • Posted on 08/01/2012
  • /Under Musique

David Bowie and France, that’s a long and strange story – his 1977 album Low was recorded at the legendary Château d’Herouville where he refused to sleep in the master bedroom since he thought it was haunted by the ghosts of former residents Chopin and George Sand; producer Tony Visconti took the chambre des fântomes instead. Seven years earlier, Bowie already had recorded an English language version of Jacques Brel’s Amsterdam, and for his Gallic version of Heroes see also Guuz’s post below. The sailors of Amsterdam have a slight return in Life on Mars, which Hitler-obsessed Alain Z. Kan adapted en Francais in 1973; Kan was last seen at a Parisian Metro station on April 14, 1990 and never reappeared again.

David Bowie – Amsterdam
David Bowie – Héros

Alain Kan – La vie en Mars
Keren Ann – Life on Mars

Lucien Midnight – Space Oddity

Cranky – David Bowie Cries for No One

FS Vintage: Anton Walbrook

  • Posted on 07/01/2012
  • /Under Musique

If you’re a movie aficionado surfing the net, you might already have stumbled across the fine blog Fuck Yeah Anton Walbrook. Fellow actor and movie historian Stephen Fry called Walbrook „one of the great forgotten actors of film“. Actually named Adolf Wohlbrück, the half Jewish scion of an Austrian dynasty of circus clowns changed his name for obvious reasons when exiled in England in the 30s; he hated the Nazis so much that he never even played one. Probably the most elegant actor of his generation, his best works were helmed by the most stylish directors of his time, among them Michael Powell, and of course Max Ophüls, for whom he played the raconteur in 1950’s La Ronde, also doing the movie’s unforgettable intro song. The voice of the girl is Simone Signoret’s.

Anton Walbrook – La Ronde

Under the Radar 6: Jasmin Tabatabai

  • Posted on 06/01/2012
  • /Under Musique

Germany’s adult pop fashion of the hour is the coffee table recycling of songs from the 20s to 40s – think Tukur, think Alsmann, and German actress Jasmin Tabatabai makes no exception. On her recent album Eine Frau, released last September, she covers songs by Hollaender, Tucholsky and others, all cushily bossa- or jazzified – by and large what Diana Krall or Norah Jones do, with less production value. Probably for reasons de chic, her lieder album also contains a French composition, La chanson d’Hélène, originally written by Philippe Sarde and Jean-Loup Dabadie for the 1970 movie Les choses de la vie. While the rest of Tabatabai’s album sounds, well, somewhat menopausal, her version of Hélène isn’t even that bad – just as clean and empty as a tumbler from a desolate dishwasher.

Jasmin Tabatabai – La chanson d’Hélène

Extra: Romy Schneider’s classic film chanson (w/ Michel Piccoli), plus a bunch of other worthwhile versions, including an English language one.

Romy Schneider – La chanson d’Hélène
Marina Celeste – La chanson d’Hélène
Francoiz Breut – La chanson d’Hélène
Berry – La chanson d’Hélène
Youn Sun Nah – La chanson d’Hélène
Dream Makers – Helen’s Song

Under the Radar 3: Aldona

  • Posted on 04/01/2012
  • /Under Musique

Polish singer and actress Aldona Nowowiejska lives à Paris and amalgamates folklore sounds from Eastern Europe with French flourish. The result is a peculiar, at times brill mix you won’t hear too often on pop radio. Her fourth album, Sonnet, features one French language song only – A Murmur, a breathless, tenderly boisterous vignette that seems to reflect the mood of the red-skirted girl on the cover and sounds like a less affected Camille exchanging butterfly kisses with Django’s grand grandson. Don’t miss the last whisper.

Aldona – A Murmur

Under the Radar 2: Cécile Corbel

  • Posted on 03/01/2012
  • /Under Musique

Folk singer and celtic harpist Cécile Corbel comes from the department Finistère in the extreme West of Brittany, and she’s a bit like a fille fragile from another, more mystic and elegant time. On her Songbook Vol. 3: Renaissance she transforms Alan Stivell’s solemn, originally a bit leaden ballad about Irish High King Brian Boru into a floating incantation of her home country, and on La belle s’est endormie, she fuses a French traditional with chamber music strings. Her fairy style vocals fit the courtly character of the tunes quite perfectly; everything here feels like a breeze from the End of the World – and that’s exactly what Finistère means.

Cécile Corbel – Brian Boru

Cécile Corbel – La belle s’est endormie

 

Under the Radar 1: Céline Rudolph

  • Posted on 02/01/2012
  • /Under Musique

„Summer rain in Paris, and the cool sound of Miles Davis“ – German chanteuse Céline Rudolph certainly is no literary virtuoso, but who cares for lyrics anyway? Her most recent album gathers 11 songs by the late Henri Salvador, kind of a Gallic Nat King Cole jack-of-all-trades who did all too many ditties for a fistful of Francs. Frau Rudolph catapults Salvador directly into the feelgood realm of her favorite women’s magazines, with the help of some Brazilian players who obviously think that Saudade is a new brand of fabric softener – registered trademark of the Snuggly Products Corporation, with guaranteed 14 days of fresh scent. Only my ill-mannered three-year-old nephew says it stinks.

Céline Rudolph – Wintergarten

The other side of soft, slightly funkified, from Henri Salvador’s Chante Vian album:

Henri Salvador – Ave Maria des pêcheurs

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