Looking for the Perfect Christmas Gift? C'est Chic! , a wonderful compilation on the reliable Ace/Kent reissue label. It features '24 hand-picked gems form France, epicenter of the 1960s yé-yé-girl phenomenon'. A few hits, like Anna Karina's Roller Girl and France Gall's Laisse tomber les filles, but a lot of fairly obscure gems indeed. Like Michèle Torr's Non, à tous les garçons. A song written by Serge Gainsbourg. Or the baroque Je ne sais pas ce que je veux (a cover by sixties-band Nirvana,reworked by Hardy herself). A thick booklet with great info (main informant: Graham from the excellent [...]
About two weeks ago, we already posted a live version of Zaz's splendid Piaf cover Dans la rue here . Since she with the husky voice is a dedicated Gainsbourg aficionado as well, she also played a sparse, and highly intense manouche-style version of Serge's Ces petits riens during the same gig, backed by bassist Mathieu Verlot and guitarist Guillaume Juhel. You will find this cover neither on her recent no. 1 album nor anywhere on the net. The song was recorded during an intimate live performance at MDR radio station, Halle, Germany, with an audience of ten (!) handpicked [...]
The new Françoise Hardy album, out March 29, sports songs written by Calogero (new single Noir sur blanc), La Grande Sophie and Arthur H. But the title track was written by none other than FillesSourires-friend Fouxi . Posted that song a year ago on this blog ( see ?), but it's time for a re-up. Fouxi told me a while back that Hardy was thinking of covering her song, and now she named her album after it too! Top that! Curious about the Hardy-version, and the rest of the album. Hope it's better than the mixed bag [...]
Though Sarah Nixey is British, she's a fille sourire to boot, levitating effortlessly between the realms of innocence and lasciviousness, the subversive and the sublime. With Black Box Recorder – assisted by Luke Haines of Auteurs fame and John Moore, ex-Jesus & Marychain –, she recorded three of the smartest, though heavily neglected pop CDs of the last decade; a new album was announced for 2009, and we're still waiting. French Rock'n'Roll from Recorder's brilliant second record Facts of Life echoes the spirit of Jane & Serge, London-style, and features even a few lines en francais: [...]
No need to introduce beautiful Françoise Hardy. The born Parisienne (1944) recorded so many great tracks I wouldn't even know where to start. In this one, J'ai Coupé Le Téléphone from 1969, she only needs two minutes to tell us her story. All goes in a very yéyé way, completed with some slightly psychedelic sound effects. As Françoise cuts the telephone wiring and stays in bed all day long it doesn't need a lot of imagination to see yourself laying next to her. Replace the bed (I'll try to keep things decent) by a hammock while holding a cocktail under [...]
Spätestens seit Vanessa Paradis wissen wir, dass französische Sängerinnen grundsätzlich gut aussehen und unschuldige Texte ins Mikro hauchen müssen, um eines unser Clichés von "französischer Musik" zu bedienen. Jeder weiß natürlich, dass das nicht stimmt. Doch hier im Popleben hat es noch niemand wirklich geschafft, dieses Vorurteil aus der Welt zu schaffen. Auf dem ersten Blick passte auch Coralie in dieses Bild - doch nach ihren Exkursionen zu Bossa Nova ("Salle des pas perdus") und schlichtem Pop ("Bye Bye Beauté") hat sie sich nun für Toystore mit ihrem Über-Bruder Benjamin Biolay in einem Spielzeugladen einschliessen [...]
Today's edition of MOKB/SIRIUS Blog Radio features a lot of what we've been talking about this week and last as well as some of the songs and artists our friends on the interwebs have been yacking about! Tune in at Noon EST and again at Midnight EST/9pm PST! If you don't have a SIRIUS account, I believe you can still sign up for a free 24-hour trial and listen online ... Left Of Center, Channel 26! We've got the first half of a [...]
Yes, the above photo is of Françoise Hardy; she is just one of the artist covered on White Hinterland's new five-song (two originals, three covers) French-language EP Luniculaire. I've been smitten with Casey Dienel's voice since here 2006 debut Wind Up Canary, which was only furthered by her latest project, White Hinterland's Phylactery Factory. Jazz-tinged, [...]
mp3: El Perro Del Mar - Glory To The World mp3: Third Wave - Eleanor Rigby mp3: The Martells - Time To Say Goodbye mp3: Françoise Hardy - Suzanne mp3: Karen Dalton - Something On Your Mind mp3: Trio Bulgarka - Mari Tudoro Today's post features all tracks that I've been listening to recently; all female voices from all over the place who are all amazing. Straight outta Gothenburg, Sweden comes El Perro Del Mar with [...]
All year long, we've seen all kinds of articles, films, tv-shows and whatnot about 1968. In Holland, the bottom line of that media output was: nothing's changed, really. There were some compilations (see here ), recently Chantent 68 was released in France. It features mostly EMI-artists doing songs from the past, and ofcourse the outcome is mixed. There are some ghastly covers (Gaetane Abrial schmalzing up Cohen's Suzanne, some Anis-guy butchering Otis' Sitting on the Dock of the Bay), some fair ones (Benoit Doremus II does an acceptable version of Dutronc's Il est cinq heures, Polar & [...]
Next week I am going to see Leonard Cohen play in London. This is a show that I am really excited about. The first Leonard Cohen song I ever remember listening to was 'Suzanne'. I was thirteen. I vividly remember how hearing these words and this music together instantly changed my whole world. Leonard Cohen has stated in interviews that the story of in the song was about an encounter in Montreal with the wife of sculptor Armand Vaillancourt, Suzanne Verdal . Cohen recently described the song as the best of his whole career. [...]
Ladies & Gentlemen, I'd like to introduce you to the sexiest French couple in the world... JACQUES DUTRONC ET FRANCOISE HARDY ! Two from Francoise: Francoise Hardy -- Je T'aime Francoise Hardy -- Je Pense a'Lui & Two from Jacques: Jacques Dutronc -- Les Cactus [...]
Françoise Hardy - "je n'attends plus personne" This is like the grandmother to that Kills song . I have a French grandmother, and I really like to imagine her swaying to this song. All its chin-up resolve and grit, all its wholly awesome buzzing guitar and orchestral stabs. The Florida wind softly blowing through her silver hair, standing proud on her balcony, overseeing the Tallahassee skyline, thinking about the thousands of people her life has brushed, like when you let someone go in front of you in a parking lot, or when you wait [...]
The hipster fascination with French pop is no secret. Ostensibly, it's because Serge Gainsbourg, Sylvie Vartan, Jane Birkin, et al, were turning out good songs. But what we see when looking at the artists themselves is something deeper. The idea of "hip" has many definitions, but its most sought-after form is one immersed in the [...]
Il y a quelques mois je cassa mon téléphone, le faisant tombé de 5 étages alors que le jour et ma concierge se levaient, je compris vite que j'avais perdu tous mes numéros et les vieux textos que j'avais pris la peine de laisser exister, ce qui aurait dû être une phase de vie sans amis ou dépendant de MSN messenger à au contraire était le commencement d'une vie de nouveaux amis nouveaux car j'allais les redecouvrir. Je reçus des textos au fil des jours des : comment ça va ? ou des T'as un + 1 ? [...]
Photo: Lina Il N'y A Pas D'Amour Heureux - Françoise Hardy Poet, socialist and one-time Surrealist Louis Aragon likely wrote the refrain il ny'a pas d'amour heureux (essentially, there's no happiness in love) stoic and shrugging and what-can-you-do. But Françoise Hardy sings his scribble (and Georges Bressons' music) with thin skin and handkerchiefs. That the song's sentimental aesthetic [...]
The forthcoming second album from Beirut , The Flying Club Cup , comes out October 9 on Ba Da Bing. Like Gulag Orkester before it, the new LP features the work of Jeremy Barnes and Heather Trost of a Hawk and a Hacksaw , but also benefits from string arrangements and guest vocals by Owen Pallett . The most obvious change for Beirut has to be the move away from the Balkan sounds of his debut - Club Cup focuses instead on French culture in the vein of François Hardy and Jacques Brel. I was [...]
Though the You Tubed clips we regularly feature on Wednesdays are more often an indulgence in nostalgia or an expression of disbelief that we were ever able to find such obscure vids in the first place, the cultural juggernaut of a website has other musical uses. Letting you hear elusive album material in the first place, how about? An album I've been wildly unsuccessful in tracking down is the 1965 compilation of French language music by dreamy 60's dish Françoise Hardy, The "Yeh Yeh" Girl From Paris . It exists to be found on [...]
Tropicalismo , also known as Tropicália, is a Brazilian art movement that arose in the late 1960s and encompassed theatre, poetry and music, among other forms. Caetano Veloso is one of the leaders of this movement, trio Os Mutantes one of the key bands. In his book Tropical Truth , Veloso described Tropicalia as antropofagia ; cannibalism of all kinds of art forms. Which meant that musicians listened to, borrowed from and got inspired by everyone ranging from Brazilian legends like Joao Gilberto to the Mothers of Invention. And, ofcourse, Françoise Hardy, for this is the [...]
February next year, Voilà will be released, the new album by former Go-Go's-singer Belinda Carlisle . In the eighties, she had massive solo-hits with Heaven is a Place on Earth (sampled by Orbital as well) and Leave a Light On . The redhead, who posed for Playboy in 2001, has had a knack for France and French music for a long time. Voilà therefore is a collection of covers, ranging from Serge & Brigitte's Bonnie & Clyde (that was featured here before ) to Piaf's Sous le Ciel [...]
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