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Album review


Sliimy

Paint Your Face


Paris 

20/08/2009 - 

Sliimy, the hot young French pop phenomenon ‘du jour’, belongs to the Internet generation and owes much of his lightning rise to fame to Myspace. Putting his own contemporary spin on vintage pop, Sliimy has gone straight from making DIY records in his bedroom to gracing the covers of the hippest music mags. Sliimy live in United Kingdom : London on 24 august, Birmingham on 25 and Newcastle on 26, and a tour in the USA on september...

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Sliimy started out as a geeky-looking student in St Etienne, dreaming up bubbly off-the-wall pop songs in English in his spare time. He regularly posted his latest grooves on his Myspace page, copying the example of his personal pop idols: Lily Allen, Kate Nash and Britney Spears. Sliimy’s strikingly high-pitched acoustic cover of Britney’s Womanizer soon struck Internet gold, fans cyber-exchanging it around the world in one easy click.

Sliimy went on to hook up with a musical alter ego by the name of Feed, a local producer and multi-instrumentalist who "cleaned up" his made-in-a-student-bedroom œuvre. Sliimy’s songs scrubbed up so well, in fact that – aided by a huge Internet buzz – the 20-year-old landed himself a recording contract with a major label. What’s more, his indie pop gem Wake Up now looks set to become the Big French Hit of the Summer. The single is already being played non-stop on all mainstream radio stations and meanwhile, its mop-headed, big spectacle-wearing creator has been timidly doing the rounds of the nation’s talk shows and appearing in cult music mags such as Les Inrocks.

Sliimy, a clever mix of indie elite and mainstream pop, has evoked comparisons with Mika (both singers having the same falsetto voice and instantly catchy chorus lines) and Prince (for the sexual ambiguity). His debut album Paint Your Face may sound a few weak notes here and there, but on the whole it looks ready to take the global charts by storm. And Sliimy’s choice of English as his main songwriting language promises to make him as international as his birth medium, the Internet. Unusually for a French singer, Sliimy handles his chosen idiom well, performing with impeccable pronunciation, an acceptable accent and serving up lyrics which may at first glance appear simplistic but are, in fact, studded with wit and charm. What’s more, his bubbly brand of hedonism is a breath of fresh air in these gloom-laden days of economic woes.

Sliimy’s most outstanding talent is, of course, his infallible vocal technique which shines on compositions inspired by his female pop idols. Paint Your Face contains a number of instantly memorable pop gems wrapped up in the simplest but slickest of arrangements. Sliimy’s uplifting pop songs are ultra-contemporary and ultra-natural but, make no mistake about it, they are rooted in vintage pop culture, traces of The Beatles being much in evidence at times. Meanwhile, other tracks on Paint Your Face tap into more of a Lily Allen vein (no surprises here, given that Sliimy worships the Brit star.) To cut a long story short, Paint Your Face is the Album of the Season - an album so zingy and fresh it explodes in your mouth like the sweetest, sharpest of sorbets! Come to think of it, this album should probably be sold in a cone!


 Listen to an extract from Wake up

Sliimy live in United Kingdom : London on 24 august, Birmingham on 25 and Newcastle on 26, before a tour in the USA on september...

Sliimy Paint Your Face (Warner) 2009

Jean-Eric  Perrin

Translation : Julie  Street