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Belgium’s Zita Swoon
Album no.9: Big Blueville
Paris
03/04/2008 -
Who are the mysteriously-named Zita Swoon? France’s Miossec rates them! Belgium’s Arno thinks they’re rock gods! Sounds like it’s time for RFI Musique to investigate the Zita Swoon phenomenon. The founder, lead singer, songwriter, composer and all-round driving force behind the group is Stef Kamil Carlens. Since 1996, when SKC quit his post as bass-player with the renowned Belgian rock outfit Deus to form his own group, he has campaigned ceaselessly on all fronts. Over the years, Zita Swoon have been involved in all kinds of artistic, musical and multi-arts projects, collaborating on everything from film scores to work with contemporary theatre and dance troupes. Meanwhile, the band have also devoted an impressive amount of time and energy to their own recording career, Big Blueville ranking as their ninth album to date.
Big Blueville stands out from the rest of Zita Swoon’s discography because it was partly produced with the French market in mind. As SKC puts it : "We really need to make it big in France right now if we want to develop further as a band. Things are going well for us in Belgium and the Netherlands, but that’s not enough!" The band’s previous attempt to break into the French market ended in failure when the release of their 2007 album Big City was cancelled in France after their record label bit the dust. Undefeated, Zita Swoon are now back with Big Blueville, the second stage of their French onslaught.
Striking the perfect balance
Big Blueville features five tracks from the ill-fated Big City including Infinite Down (a song originally written for Jane Birkin but which that most English of French ‘chanteuses’ has never sung). Needless to say, all five tracks from Big City have been significantly revamped for Big Blueville. As Stef Kamil Carlens explains : "Those particular songs evolved a lot on the European tour we did after Big City was released. So we decided to re-record them in a much more ‘live’, direct way this time round". These ‘old’ tracks stand alongside two other offerings from earlier days which have also been significantly revised and reworked (People Can’t Stand the Truth and Giving Up the Hero). All seven tracks, re-recorded in the studio in 2007, fit neatly together with the group’s new compositions, completing Zita Swoon’s 10-track album into a pleasantly homogeneous whole. It seems that the Belgian rockers have finally hit upon the balance they have been seeking since their highly personal 2004 release A Song About a Girl. Deftly mixing acoustic ambiances and amplified volts with songs in French and English, Zita Swoon affirm their reputation with a sound that is more vibrant and luminous than ever.
Big Blueville is impressively rich on the rhythmic front and switches deftly back and forth between tracks with understated instrumentation and more amply orchestrated numbers. Like their Amsterdam-based ‘cousins’ The Nits or their American counterparts Lambchop (minus the strings!), Zita Swoon manage to meld the opposing forces of rock, ‘chanson’, soul and R&B into a smooth and coherent whole. They even throw a little bit of hip-swinging ‘island’ rhythms into their musical mix here and there, adding a burst of piano, synthesisers, Cuban percussion, acoustic and electric guitar and some superb vocal harmonies. Stef Kamil Carlens has been busy experimenting with female backing vocals for four years now. The difference with this new album is that now the female vocalists get to step centre stage on a number of tracks and share some songs as quasi duets, adding a soulful touch to Stef Kamil’s husky tones.
Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan & Nick Cave
Stef Kamil Carlens describes himself as verging on the melancholic, but the songs on Big Blueville cover a wide range of themes - from city and family life to friendship, women and love (both the lost, the refound and the unrequited kind). Upbeat tracks such as I Feel Alive in the City and Quand même content segue neatly into a more gritty form of realism on L’Opaque paradis and Je range. Judging by the quality of the lyric-writing on this new opus, Big Blueville places Stef Kamil Carlens firmly in the tradition of the ‘singer-songwriters’ he so admires. "I love the writerly philosophical side to Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan and Nick Cave’s songwriting. I love their sense of freedom and their work itself". But the man who triggered his musical passion happens to be a fellow Belgian, Arno. "It was Arno’s Putain Putain that made me realise I could be Belgian and play rock music without constantly thinking about copying what the Brits were doing. Arno’s been a sort of benevolent uncle to me over the years." And that uncle is now taking great pride in his protégé’s achievement. After listening to Big Blueville the Belgian rock veteran declared, "If God’s a rock singer, his son must be Stef Kamil!"
On the other side of the border, Christophe Miossec - a major singer-songwriter in the French music world - has also succumbed to the charms of Zita Swoon, stepping in to give Stef Kamil a hand on Big Blueville. "Christophe helped me out with all the French songs on the album. I was really lucky to be able to work with him, having him read over what I’d written and make corrections here and there. French is not my mother tongue and I have a lot more trouble manipulating the language than I do in English." Like Arno, Miossec is a fervent believer in the Belgian rockers, tirelessly proclaiming that "Zita should be huge in France! If they’re not, there’s no justice in the world!"
Part of Zita Swoon’s problem to date has been that the band have always excelled on the live circuit, but they have consistently struggled to translate their on-stage alchemy onto record. Finally, with their ninth album, Zita Swoon have added that extra dimension to their sound, unleashing the full potential of their music. All the Belgian rockers have to do now is conquer the hearts and minds of the French!
Nicolas Preschey
Translation : Julie Street
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