RFI Musique - - Album review - Françoise Hardy

Album review

Françoise Hardy

La pluie sans parapluie

Paris

31/03/2010 -

A new release from Françoise Hardy is always an event. With her 26th album La pluie sans parapluie, Hardy recreates her fragile world, calling on a new generation composers to write for her unique voice.

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Way back in the 1980s, Françoise Hardy declared that Décalages would be her last album, ending a career that had always weighed heavily on her. Not so: many years and albums later, she is back again with her 26th release, La pluie sans parapluie (rain without an umbrella), and remains very much a model for the generation that followed her.

The first track, Noir sur blanc, is surprisingly written by French variety singer Calogero, whose musical world wouldn’t seem to have much in common Hardy’s. And yet the melody lines work perfectly with Hardy’s smoky vocals, as does the quaint, old-world charm of the lyrics. The lion’s share of the rest of the album is written by Alain Lubrano, although other songwriters offer material as well. They include La Grande Sophie, with her rather conventional Mister, and Arthur H, who provides Les Mots s’envolent. There is also Ben Christopher, another long-time collaborator, who wrote the slowburn Esquives, and Jean-Louis Murat with his Memory Divine, a track Françoise Hardy touchingly sings in English.

Thierry Stremler and Pascale Daniel, who worked on Hardy’s previous album Tant de belles choses, contribute a couple of songs. Produced with Edith Fambuena and Dominique Blanc-Francart, La Pluie sans parapluie opens yet another chapter in an already lengthy career. No one will be jumping up and down at the originality of this album; but fans will enjoy the lyrics and vocals of Françoise Hardy that, like a fine wine, continue to age extraordinarily well.

There are a few rock moments on the album (Les Pas), but they too seem to suit her style. Since Tant de belles choses in 2006, Françoise Hardy seems to have found a second wind, as well as a new audience willing to buy her albums on the strength of her unique yet familiar voice. Her singing is in magisterial form on this album, and she displays wonderful suppleness with her phrasing (Je ne vous aime pas). This is an album for those who have the time for it, and who don’t treat music as just another product to be consumed. An album that harks back to how they used to be made, with care and emotion. And above all with an understated elegance that is increasingly hard to find these days.