sat 05/10/2024

French pop

Reissue CDs Weekly: Serge Gainsbourg & Jean-Claude Vannier

In terms of cinema history, 1969’s Les Chemins de Katmandou is a footnote. Directed by André Cayatte, whose most interesting films were 1963’s interrelated marital dramas Jean-Marc ou la Vie Conjugale and Françoise ou la Vie Conjugale, it was a...

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French Touch, Red Gallery

Un Voyage Á Travers Dans Le Paysage Électronique Français, the French subtitle, goes further. French Touch is the first exhibition to celebrate and dig into France’s electronic music heritage: exploring the lineage which laid the ground for the...

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Gilbert Bécaud

Anthologie 1953–2002 is a monster. A 20-disc set spanning almost 50 years, it tracks one of France’s most beloved singers and songwriters. Gilbert Bécaud died in December 2001, but songs from his posthumously released Je Partirai album are included...

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CD: Bosco Rogers - Post Exotic

Anyone looking for some psychedelic pop to at least give the illusion that we might now actually be in the middle of summer could do much worse than try out the debut album by Anglo-French duo Bosco Rogers. Their 21st century twist on the Monkees’...

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Lizzy Mercier Descloux

Lizzy Mercier Descloux was an early adopter. In 1975, she travelled from her Paris home to Manhattan and saw The Ramones, Patti Smith, Television and the Richard Hell-edition Heartbreakers. Although the first issue of the New York fanzine Punk came...

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theartsdesk in Paris: Peregrinations on the Pigalle

Sometimes appearances can be deceptive. The frontman on stage looks as generic it gets. His scruffy beard, retro specs, baseball hat, shapeless jeans and the bulging outline of a mobile phone stuffed in his trouser pocket don’t add up to suggest...

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CD: Syracuse - Liquid Silver Dream

There's a current running through the underground club / electronic music of the 2010s that cares not a jot for progress – but neither is it retro as such. It's been called “outsider house”, which is a pretty lame name for stuff that is often...

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Little Bob Story

 Little Bob Story: Off the Rails + Live in ‘78Aki Kaurismäki’s 2011 film Le Havre features a cameo from a hard-rocking band fronted by a grey-haired gentleman who crops up elsewhere in the action. He is Roberto Piazza, and trades under the name...

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CD: Nicolas Godin - Contrepoint

According to the press release for Contrepoint, “AIR have not split up.” Nicolas Godin, one half of the French duo, goes on to say: “We weren’t surprising ourselves anymore… I’d made a statement with AIR and I wanted to go back to the classical...

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Eden

A film about 20 years in the life of a character acknowledged as peripheral to a movement in popular culture which spawned global stars is a difficult sell. Audiences are going to wonder whether the chronicling of a minor player not central to the...

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Je t'aime: The Story of French Song, BBC Four

The problem with many music documentaries is that they suffer from over-familiarity. In a bid to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, they end up spreading themselves too thinly on an area already well covered. Viewers tune in and, largely...

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CD: The dø - Shake Shook Shaken

Whether intentional or not, the third album by French chart-topping duo The dø is effectively a renewal of “Sweet Dreams”-era Eurythmics. The synth bubble-‘n’-pulse and vocal lines nodding towards the choral and gospel inescapably evoke what Annie...

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