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French Music Seen From Abroad (March 2007)
The Spring Renaissance
Paris
23/03/2007 -
What do Carla Bruni and Air have in common? An uncanny knack, it seems, of exporting their French sounds abroad and topping the international charts. Both are big in the news this month following the worldwide release of new albums. British daily newspaper The Independent (21/2) hailed Bruni's new release, No Promises (Naïve), as "Carla's collection", claiming the album was a suitable revenge for the beauty "best known as a supermodel" before giving up the catwalk and reinventing herself as a singer. Bruni had, in fact, been generally derided in the French press when she launched her recording career in 2004. She subsequently proved she was much more than a pretty face, however, her debut album, Quelqu’un m’a dit, going on to sell a staggering 2 million copies.
Today, Bruni's singing-songwriting talent is widely praised in the media and all the leading international newspapers and magazines, including the best-selling German weekly Der Spiegel and the popular Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter, have been rushing to interview her. The German daily Hamburger Abendblatt (7/2) noted that "Carla Bruni is still singing poems about impossible love" - in French as well as English - but the overall tone of her material has changed. Meanwhile, the lifestyle section of Spanish newspaper La Verdad (16/2) reports that Carla, now "advised by Marianne Faithfull," has "abandoned the chic enchantment of chanson to adapt the work of Anglo-Saxon poets such as Emily Dickinson, Walter de la Mare, Christina Rosetti, Auden and Yeats instead."
Like Bruni, the last album from hip Versailles electro duo Air dates back to 2004. But the duo's new release, Pocket Symphony (Virgin), has proved critically divisive. In the U.S., the Los Angeles Daily News (1/3) declared Air's new album to be most disappointing, relegating the French double act to the status of "past glories." Apparently, the Versailles duo's music has become too pretentious for some ears. In Germany, the Rheinische Post (1/3) dismissed Pocket Symphony as "music for aristocrats". The Boston Herald (U.S. 16/3) did not agree, however, praising Jean-Benoît Dunckel and Nicolas Godin's attempts to "bridge the gap between pop and classical territories" and their experiments with Japanese instruments and Asian sounds. The American showbiz bible Billboard (3/3) went straight to the heart of the problem, claiming that Pocket Symphony was undoubtedly "suffering from the comparison" with its brilliant predecessor, Talkie Walkie.
Meanwhile, Michel Polnareff's comeback seems to have aroused almost as much interest abroad as it has in the French media. In the U.S. the Post Chronicle (3/3) reported that the singer had made "a triumphant return in Paris", introducing American readers to the illustrious French ex-pat who has spent the past three decades and more living in California.
Polnareff, "acclaimed in the '60s and '70s for his angelic voice, acquired huge popularity in France before leaving the country 34 years ago hounded by accusations of tax evasion." In the U.K., The Observer (4/3) noted that "Polnareff was also a rival to the late Serge Gainsbourg… Both men mixed French traditional chanson with rock, pop and jazz. Both were sexually provocative, suffered from depression and had cult followings."
Another respected British broadsheet, The Independent (3/3), did not appear to be aware of that cult following. "Michel who?", the paper's critic sneered, pointing out that "Polnareff's fame is largely confined to the French-speaking world." This has not stopped French pop's comeback king from hitting the box-office jackpot on his first tour since 1973, however. The Independent was forced to acknowledge that "all 140,000 tickets for Polnareff's ten concerts at the Omnisports hall in Bercy in eastern Paris have been sold out at prices of up to €140 (£95) each." And "after Paris", La Libre Belgique (5/3) exalted, "Polnareff is due to embark upon a major tour that, between 17 March and 7 July, will take him to over fifteen French cities as well as Brussels and Geneva. This landmark tour will be followed by the release of a live album and DVD."
Meanwhile, Michel Jonasz has been rather less successful in his comeback on the recording front, "succumbing to the siren song of the cover version," mocked a critic in Switzerland's Le Temps (17/3). "Such reappropriation is always a perilous endeavour", and the French star has, Le Temps claims, inevitably ended up "parodying himself." Jonasz's new album, Chanson française (Warner) features "the holy trinity, Brel-Ferré-Brassens (who account for seven out of twelve tracks)… Piaf, Nougaro and Prévert complete the gloomy picture, Jonasz adding two original songs as a sort of bombastic homage."
With such a diverse range of new French offerings in record stores and on stage, it hardly seems worth investing in yet another album of substandard covers. We suggest you rush straight out to your local cinema instead and catch La Vie en rose, Olivier Dahan's moving feature film about Edith Piaf. The film recently opened New York's annual Rendez-Vous With French Cinema where it impressed reviewers and amateur cinema-goers alike. Indeed, the critic from the New York Times (28/2) enthused that "Marion Cotillard’s feral portrait of the French singer Edith Piaf as a captive animal hurling herself at the bars of her cage is the most astonishing immersion of one performer into the body and soul of another I’ve ever encountered in a film." Hardly surprising, then, that over 4 million French cinema-goers have already flocked to see Cotillard's on-screen portrayal of the tormented chanson star.
Gilles Rio
Translation : Julie Street
16/01/2007 -
