French pop
Kieron Tyler
The French national holiday of 14 July might be marked by parades and fly-pasts in Paris, but here on the Atlantic coast it’s the central date for Francofolies, the annual festival dedicated to French music. La Rochelle hosted its first Francofolies in 1985. Twenty-six years on, the festival remains the premier showcase for Francophone music. This year the bill took in David Guetta’s dance-floor cheesiness, Gotan Project's overhauled tango, actress Mélanie Laurent plugging her recent album and all points in between. A window like no other on the French mainstream, it also showcases up-and- Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
French interpreters Nouvelle Vague have a seemingly unsustainable path. Reinterpreting Anglo songs of the post-punk and new wave eras in unlikely semi-easy-listening settings (bossa nova, reggae, country and bluegrass) would appear to bring diminishing returns. But on their last album, 2009’s 3, they went gently Gallic, covering “Ça plane pour moi”, originally by Belgium’s Plastic Bertrand. Fourth time out, it’s all Francophone.Marc Collin and Olivier Libaux’s first three Nouvelle Vague albums mainly featured lesser-known female Franco singers (notably Camille and Mélanie Pain – some original Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Mehdi Zannad isn’t a familiar name, but he’s issued a raft of albums as Fugu and has been championed by Stereolab. His profile in Japan is good, and he’s composed soundtracks in his native France. Fugue, the first album released under his own name, is co-produced by Tahiti 80’s Xavier Boyer. "Fugue" translates as "break away" – which he has from the Fugu guise. He’s also broken away from English. Fugue is Zannad's first French-language album. Language, though, is no barrier to basking in this summery pop.Zannad was inspired to sing in French after working on the film La France in 2007. Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Montréal natives The Arcade Fire sing in English. Yet 65 percent of the Québec city’s population have French as their first language. Les FrancoFolies de Montréal is Francophone Canada’s annual celebration of non-Anglo Saxon music. This year, big draws include French visitors Jeanne Moreau and Etienne Daho performing Jean Genet’s Le condamné à mort with musical accompaniment. Local legend Jean-Pierre Ferland is reprising his seminal 1970 set Jaune, the first Québec album to - controversially - fuse Franco sensibilities with rock dynamics. More than a festival, FrancoFolies is also cultural Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Keren Ann’s new album, 101, might showcase her new-found pop smarts but last night’s hour-and-a-half set ranged through her whole catalogue taking in country-flavoured balladry, early Velvet Underground chugging and introspective singer-songwriting. A single French-language song acknowledged where she first attracted attention. Her American-accented English betrayed little of her Franco-Israeli roots. Truly multinational, her show at the Jazz Café was similarly diverse.It was a peculiarly paced set. The up-tempo “Je fume pour oublier que tu bois” followed a harmonica-racked take of 101’s “ Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Arnaud Fleurent-Didier’s La Reproduction was one of the most striking albums of last year. The news that he and his band are playing the UK for the first time next week at the Institut Français is exciting as La Reproduction was more than great musically. It was also a cultural benchmark, putting the Mai 68 generation under the microscope and taking them to task for being inward-looking – they made great mayonnaise at the expense of paying attention to their kids.La Reproduction is Fleurent-Didier’s fourth album, his first for a major label. His songwriting draws on the classic romantic arc Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Vanessa Paradis is a card-carrying icon, but for us Brits the reason why is hard to define. After the hyper-cute “Joe le taxi” hit the charts in 1987 when she was 14, Paradis didn’t carve a musical career here. Being the partner of Johnny Depp is her usual route into the press. As an actress, she attracts attention when her films get a British release. Last night was a rare chance to see whether her music could stand on its own, and make her more than a cipher.In France, she’s not wildly prolific musically: she’s issued 10 albums, the first in 1988. But four were live sets and one a best-of. Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Bleu Venise might be recorded in LA with figures familiar from Joni Mitchell, Madeleine Peyroux and Melody Gardot albums, but this French music takes from the Anglophone world without sacrificing its identity. Daphné’s Bleu Venise is modern, literate, chanson-based pop.Daphné’s break came in 2003 after she met Benjamin Biolay, France’s all-purpose and ubiquitous musical mover and shaker. He also kick-started the career of Keren Ann. But Biolay casts no shadows; his collaborators and protégés move on and flourish without him. Unlike Keren Ann and despite previous collaborations with The Divine Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Breton capital Rennes is an attractive city. Move north from the train station, pass through a covered market with tripe and saucisse sellers, cross a canal and there's a series of Italianate squares and arcades. Further along is the quaint Place St Anne and a warren of medieval streets lined with half-timbered buildings. It’s an inspiring cityscape. But for three days every December, the city is crammed with revellers and dogs on string who couldn't give a fig about the medieval cathedral. They're here for the Trans Musicales de Rennes, the annual musical jamboree. Just short of 100 acts Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Luxembourg's musical landscape has few claims to represent the Grand Duchy itself. Most of Luxembourg's Eurovision entries weren't actually from the Duchy, as there was little local music to draw on. So Belgium's cod punk-gone-blando Plastic Bertrand became 1987's entry (with “Amour, Amour”). In 1965 Luxembourg won Eurovision with France's France Gall's “Poupée de Cire, Poupée de Son”, a song written by her countryman Serge Gainsbourg. Radio Luxembourg began broadcasting to the outside world in the 1930s and went on to define the Swinging Sixties until the BBC woke up to what was going on. Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The arrival of Gainsbourg: Vie Héroique in British cinemas this week – under its Anglo-Saxon title Gainsbourg – assumes that distributors think there’s an audience. Even so, Gainsbourg hardly has the appeal of a Johnny Cash biopic. Or even an Ike Turner biopic. The release continues a process that began in the early 1990s, when a slow, posthumous rise to recognition of Serge Gainsbourg began outside the Francophone world, au delà de l’Hexagon. France might be a non-stop train ride from London, but this particular Gallic cultural icon has taken a while to make a mark over here.Which means that Read more ...