Eva de Roovere

Eva de Roovere worked with an impressive guestlist on her new album, Mijn huis (My house). Impressive if you’re Dutch, that is. Spinvis plays, wrote arrangements and a song, Thé Lau duets and Piet ‘Ozark Henry‘ Goddaer also contributed a song. Superproducer Reyn Ouwehand was at the controls. The reason she pops up on this blog is not only her delicate voice, but the fact that she sings two songs in French. By the way, this isn’t the first time this charming fille pops up on FS; she sang a song referring to Serge’s Je suis venu te dire and translated a track by FS-fave Shivaree. This time, she translated a song by Stephan Eicher (to Dutch) and sings a song written by Seb Duthoit (with whom she duetted earlier) and a track written by Kit Hain and Francois Welgryn. The latter, Chocolat, is honey to my ears. It’s an ode to various types of chocolate: ‘Un désir que je n’contrôle pas’. I’m pretty sure there’s no double entrendre here – though one never knows. When you hear Eva sing ‘Gelukkige verjaardag’ (Happy birthday) on the Will Tura-tribute, you can imagine how JFK must’ve felt when Marilyn sang her song to him.

Eva de Roovere – Chocolat
Seb Duthoit & Eva de Roovere – Jouer le jeu
Eva de Roovere – Gelukkige verjaardag

Dorléac

A lovely singing doll plus cinematic grooves, that sums up Dorléac rather nicely I think. The doll is Geike Arnaert, former siren of Belgian triphopstars Hooverphonic. The grooves are made by Dutch cut and paste meister Erik de Jong (aka Spinvis). They were brought together by Belgian filmdirector Hans van Nuffel, who asked them for a song for his new movie. Geike and Erik got along very well, and recorded a whole album. Erik said to Dutch site 3voor12: ‘Geike approaches English as a French singer, which I like.’ It’s a pity that there’s only one French song on the album, would’ve loved to hear more. The name Dorléac refers obviously to Catherine Deneuve’s sister Francoise Dorléac, who died in a carcrash but remains a cultfigure thanks to Les Demoiselles de Rochefort. The album is really beautiful, all kinds of references pop in my head, from Portishead to Postal Service.
Dorléac plays live only twice, here and here.

Dorleac – Disparu