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Album review
Françoise Hardy
So Many Beautiful Things
Paris
10/12/2004 -
Forty-two years! It seems incredible but Françoise Hardy's long slim silhouette has graced the French musical landscape for forty-two years. Her light, airy vocals have soared and fluttered their way through love songs and sweet romantic ballads for forty-two years! Less zany than Zouzou, less 'wild child' than Dani, but certainly far more original than other 60s divas such as Sheila and Sylvie, Françoise Hardy has proved to have remarkable staying power. Françoise marked her difference from her French pop sisters in the 'yé-yé' years, going in for a discreet and elegant style of melancholy right from the word go.
From her first single Tous les garçons et les filles (released in 1962), to her new album, Tant de belles choses, in 2004, Ms. Hardy has followed the same moody musical path, marking herself out as a cerebral 'chanteuse' rather than a dippy pop star. In the course of her long career, Françoise Hardy has worked across the musical spectrum, collaborating with everyone from Michel Berger, Gabriel Yared, William Sheller and Michel Jonasz to Serge Gainsbourg, Louis Chedid, Etienne Daho, Jean-Claude Vannier, Jean-Michel Jarre and the Brazilian songstress Tuca. But while her musical partners have changed, Françoise's own tastes have stayed the same. La Hardy's songs have remained tinged with hidden emotions and a poignant note of nostalgia.
Over the years, Françoise has managed to hold down a successful recording career while keeping her family and her private life well out of the public eye. She has also found time to indulge in her lifelong passion for astrology. And although there have been moments where Françoise may not have maintained her chart-topping status of the past, there has been no 'dead time' in her career. On the contrary, she has regularly forged her way back onto the French music scene, releasing a new album every four years.
Capricorn with melancholy rising
Sticking to her usual rhythm, Françoise has just re-emerged in the French music news with Tant de belles choses. This new album follows exactly four years after her last album, Clair obscur (released in 2000 and produced by Alain Lubrano and Rodolphe Burger, lead singer of the group Kat Onoma). This new album finds Françoise escorted by her loyal collaborator Alain Lubrano, but the 60s diva has proved she knows how to move with the times, too, widening her musical circle to embrace Jacno, Thierry Stremler, Benjamin Biolay and a young female composer by the name of Pascale Daniel. Françoise also put her feelers out across the Channel and enlisted the services of Irish singer-songwriter Perry Blake and English singer-songwriter Ben Christophers (one of her latest musical 'coups de cœur').
Françoise has had a longtime fascination for Anglo-Saxon pop and, over the years, she has adapted a number of international hits, making them her own. In 1995, hip Brit-pop band Blur invited the French diva to guest on a duo with them (To The End) and Françoise enjoyed the experience so much she teamed up with American star Iggy Pop on the duet I’ll Be Seing You (included on her last album, Clair obscur). She has also managed to keep things in the family on her new album. Thomas, the son she had with the revered French singer and actor Jacques Dutronc, guests on his mother's album, producing four tracks and weaving his jazzy guitar chords around a number of others. And yet, despite the wide diversity of songwriters and composers involved in the project, Tant de belles choses manages to maintain an impressive unity of tone, thanks to the sensitivity and originality of Françoise's songwriting.
The singer returns to a theme that has always been close to her heart, waxing lyrical about the tragedy of love. The album opens with a moving ballad recounting the last moments of a dying woman bidding a final farewell to her lover. Later on the album, on A l’ombre de la lune, a smooth boss nova composed by Benjamin Biolay, Françoise pores over amorous regrets while Soir de gala, one of two deceptively light ballads written by Thierry Stremler, gives her the opportunity to muse over missed opportunities in love. ("Laissons faner les roses, gardons les portes closes et restons-en là/ Leave the roses to fade/Close all the doors/And let's leave things there!") On Ben Christophers's moody ballad, La Folie ordinaire, Françoise reflects on the slow decline of coupledom, singing of "trains crashing off the rails" and tortured beings who have missed the point of no return.
Perry Blake's two contributions in English - Moments and So Many Things – give Françoise the opportunity to weave her crystalline vocals and deliciously French accent around graceful percussion and strings. These two songs mark a certain break in the unity of the album, their intense musical climate recalling the moody melancholy trip hop of UK stars Portishead. But the outstanding track on the album has to be Jacno's Un air de guitare, a song which fuses stark, pared-down arrangements with Françoise's haunting vocals wafting out of the musical mist.
At an age when many other singers would be contemplating retirement, Françoise Hardy proves her vocal skills are still in fine fettle and she herself is in excellent shape. Tant de belles choses is a modest, sober and intimate masterpiece which reveals Françoise Hardy, the eternal romantic still in love with love.Marion Guilbaud
Translation : Julie Street
31/03/2010 -
18/12/2006 -
04/05/2000 -
