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Album review
Nouvelle Vague's bossa revamps (part II)
New album "Bande à part"
Paris
12/06/2006 -
Bande à partopens with cinematic aplomb and the impression of being in a film stays with listeners right to the album's final chords. Lie back, relax and listen to the soft sound of waves lapping on the shore, tropical birds calling in the night - and a sultry voice whispering "Under a blue moon I saw you…" Not a hint of the dark mystery conjured up on Echo and The Bunnymen's '80s original of Killing Moon! But Marc Collin, the French producer who has masterminded Nouvelle Vague parts I and II, has made a deliberate move towards exotica. His cinematic revamps evoke images of Rio's golden beaches or the sun-soaked suburbs of Kingston, Jamaica, and he appears to have created a stack of imaginary film characters, too. The result is that with two exceptions - Bauhaus's Bela Lugosi's Dead and Visage's Fade to Grey - Nouvelle Vague's covers of new-wave classics from the late '70s and early '80s (which include Blondie's Heart of Glass) are given a surprisingly sunny spin.
While Nouvelle Vague's "sun-sea-and-sand" reworkings of new-wave gloom will no doubt shock music purists, they do have one over-riding advantage. And that is that they spare us the relentless synth chords and kitsch arrangements of certain originals (take a listen to Yazoo's Don't Go and you'll see what we mean!) But throughout the album, the bossa revamps on Bande à part manage to preserve the essential of the originals: the melodies. And the beauty of it is that these unforgettable melodies dredged up from the collective subconscious are still capable of getting crowds on the dancefloor twenty-five years on! The only criticism to be made of this ultra-smooth, ultra-sophisticated and ultimately elegant album is that it is, at times, a little too repetitive of the debut Nouvelle Vague venture whose judicious mix of bossa nova and '80s beats was a total novelty when it was released in the spring of 2004.
Bastien Brun
Translation : Julie Street
16/06/2009 -
12/01/2005 -
