Monday 8 January 2024

Christine and the Queens - Stayin' Alive!

An electronic version of the disco classic Stayin’ Alive sees Christine and the Queens start 2024 in style. Safe to say the Bee Gees song is totally owned by Héloïse Letissier and friends.

The drama plays out on the streets and canals of Venice, a place no stranger to masked theatricality, in a video that Chris directed.

It perhaps marks the turning of a page. 2023 saw the release of his Paranoïa, Angels, True Love album, an ambitious collection of work that might not have had the commercial success of earlier releases, but certainly made up for it in artistry. The year also saw performances including Coachella and Rock en Seine festivals as part of a world tour, but also the cancellation of the end of that tour.

It’s not the first time Christine and the Queens have dropped a jaw-dropping cover version, think of their version of Paradis perdus on Chaleur Humaine or Freedom ’90 on the Joseph EP.

I wouldn't be surprised if some found Paranoïa, Angels, True Love a bit too challenging, but it's a rewarding and rich album and one that will be looked back on favourably. But for those who didn't quite get the album when it came out, this new release will remind tem exactly why Christine remains an essential artist.


Wednesday 3 January 2024

Slimane: Mon Amour live at the Arc de Triomphe

 A landmark performance from Slimane on New Year's Eve in Paris, with a version of the song Mon Amour live from the Champs-Elysées in the heart of Paris for La Grande Soirée du 31 de Paris on France 2.

The song will be France's entry into this year's Eurovision, with Slimane performing the track in Malmo in May. It's always a bold move when a country puts forward an established artist to represent them in the competition, as a poor showing might reflect badly on their career. 

But equally an artist who already has an international following is also more likely to gather votes from other countries familiar with his output. However he does, the song's a strong enough one to win over new fans and Slimane's a big enough star to be undiminished if he's not the winner. 2024 looks like it will be a big year for the former winner of The Voice in 2016 and this is just another event in what looks like a key year for his career.

It will be better than the UK's entry that's for sure.

As for Slimane, he's off on tour across France and beyond for most of 2024 supporting his Chroniques d'un Cupidon album from 2022 - a number-one album in France that produced the singles Des Milliers de je t'aime, La Recette and Chez Toi. He's at the Accor Arena in Paris on March 1 although it's already sold out like many of the dates have. Another show's been added there on January 8 2025 regardless of Eurovision success or failure.

 

Tuesday 2 January 2024

Beauregard Festival 2024

 Over the holidays we had details released of the lineup for the 2024 Beauregard festival in Normany in July, with some very interesting names on the bill.

While anglophone acts like Massive Attack, LCD Soundsystem and Bring Me The Horizon are big names that grab the headlines, there's much more than just that going on, with a strong representation of French home-grown acts.

Rappers Bigflo and Oli are probably the biggest commercial concerns, but the likes of Etienne Daho, Yodelice and Veronique Sanson broaden the range of acts and styles on offer. Etienne De Crecy teams up with Boombass, formerly of electronic legends Cassius, and L'Imperatrice is one act we've featured here in the past that's gone on to well-deserved success.

We're particularly excited to see Justice make an appearance and can't wait for their new studio album that's expected this spring, their first in seven years.  A snippet was previewed by the band in their New Year message.

As always, France is home to some of the best music festivals in Europe. Events like Beauregard fill the summer months across the country, with some of the biggest names internationally as well as French acts playing to massive audiences. 

We'll have more details throughout the year.

Welcome to 2024

 So it's suddenly 2024. We managed a few posts last year, but looking ahead with our New Year 

resolutions hat on, we're aiming for a bit more over the next 12 months. Can we do it? We'll certainly try.

There are a few other projects in development this year on the book front, that will hopefully bear fruit before the summer and possibly again later in the year. Obviously, we'll let you know when things shape up.

In the meantime, there's a mountain of festive cheese that won't eat itself, some strange drinks that need to be finished off and it's still officially a holiday here in Scotland on January 2. 

It's been good to concentrate on more lengthy pieces in the past few months rather than just focusing on French music news as new things emerge, I'll aim to do a bit of both. 

Meanwhile, it's an interesting year ahead, with Paris coming under international attention with the Olympics over the summer. Hopefully, this will mean some French music acts get a bit more international attention than usual. There's more than Gainsbourg, Hallyday and Eurovision - not that there;'s anything particularly wrong with these of course - and we'll be across as much of it as we possibly can.

I'm also aiming to spread the word about what we do here and hopefully establish this site a bit better. The old Blogger template was fine in the olden days (yes, we've been going that long!) but it might be time to finally look at a refresh. You'll know it when you see it...

I'll get the ball rolling and see where it ends up.


Wednesday 6 December 2023

Shane MacGowan and Alan Stivell

 There have been plenty of obituaries for Shane MacGowan over recent days, some good, some bad. All giving him the credit he deserved and probably could have heard more of during his career. 

I saw The Pogues live a couple of times, and when living in Paris in the 90s was friendly with a mainly Irish crowd, for whom The Pogues - by then separated from MacGwan who was forging a career as a solo artist- were a landmark of recent Irish musical culture.

It was during these years that MacGowan would work with Alan Stivell, a French musician who was always ready to celebrate the celtic connections between Brittany, Ireland, and the other celtic nations.

Shane MacGowan appeared on two tracks on Stivell's Again album, a collection that saw him revisit earlier work, this time in collaboration with other artists. Three tracks featured MagGowan, Tri Martelot, Suite Sudarmoricaine and The Foggy Dew.

Many artists who worked with MacGown or who knew him have paid tribute to his unique talent, Stivell among them. 

He wrote: "It was a great gift he gave me, and for me a tip of the hat to these punk musicians to whom we owe their participation in a new Celtic wave that was about to emerge. 

"His iconoclastic way of interpreting Irish songs, the opposite of an almost classical polished approach, seduced me like many people." 

They worked together shortly after MacGowan parted from The Pogues, the collaboration probably being a welcome opportunity for him in what was no doubt an uncertain time. 

If it's a footnote to an extraordinary career and the life of a unique artist, it's a worthy one.

Tuesday 5 December 2023

David Hallyday sings Johnny Hallyday


With the previously unreleased track Un Cri, the collection of later years' songs Made in Rock‘n’Roll, and a major exhibition opening in Paris later this month, Johnny Hallyday’s presence in French music remains a towering one despite his death six years ago today.

There’s not been an artist since who has come close to filling the space he occupied, and while posthumous releases, repackages and live recordings have fed the demand for new material, there’s not been any heir to his throne. Maybe now it’s time, and maybe the successor to Le Roi is the obvious one after all. Six years is, after all, a decent enough time for things to move on, for Johnny’s legacy to be celebrated and to continue.

David Hallyday's website makes the unambiguous claim: "Only one man can claim the legitimacy and talent to re-light the fire on stage and pit the name “Hallyday” back in the hearts of millions of fans."

Step forward the son of Johnny Hallyday and the equally legendary Sylvie Vartan, with a cover of one of his father’s best-loved songs and the confirmation of a major tour by Hallyday (Jr) next year, preceded by an album of covers of Hallyday (Sr)’s songs.

If there’s any question of whether or not David Halliday has the right to this kind of project, it’s worth remembering his involvement in Johnny’s 1999 Sang Pour Sang album, arguably one of Johnny’s finest later collections. David Halliday co-wrote every song on it, from some of Johnny’s best-know later works like the title track, Vivre Pour le Meilleur and Un Jour Viendra, as well as lesser-known classics like Quelques Cris. Johnny Hallyday’s discography can be an intimidating one that’s difficult to approach on account not only of its size but also of the occasional lapses in quality that often plagued his work, but Sang Pour Sang is beyond reproach.

David Hallyday has a long-established career as a singer stretching back to the mid-80s, his first album True Cool emerging in 1988. He’s sustained that career since, his most recent album Imagine Un Monde released in 2020. While there’s no denying that his heritage may have opened a few doors for him early in his career, his success has been largely on his own terms. Few other offspring of household-name musicians have enjoyed careers as long as David Hallyday has done.

Earlier this year he unveiled the song Le Plus Heureux des Hommes as a homage to his father, the song one he had originally written for his father to perform. The original plan was for this and other songs he had written for an abandoned follow-up to Sang Pour Sang to be included on David Hallyday’s next album, but the project subsequently evolved into an album of covers of well-known Johnny Hallyday numbers rather than ones that were left on the shelf.

The new version of Requiem Pour un Fou is lightly updated with a modern electronic flavour, but at its heart doesn’t stray far from the original. It’s made clear that David has a voice that, albeit very different from his father, can carry the song. No small task with one of Johnny’s best-known power ballads.

David Hallyday’s album, also titled Requiem Pour un Fouis expected sometime in 2024, and a tour will take place in November and December. A date in Paris at the Dôme de Paris - Palais des Sports is scheduled for November 12 2024. It’s a venue his father knew well, with numerous live albums recorded there over his career.

If there’s to be a new chapter in the Hallyday story to be written, David Hallyday is more qualified than anyone else to author it.


Monday 4 December 2023

Gwendoline: Conspire

A quick summing up of where we are at the end of 2023 and where we might be going in 2024 from Gwendoline.

The track comes from the forthcoming second album C'est à moi ça from the Breton duo of Pierre Barrett and Mickaël Olivette, a piece where cold wave synths collide with a dispassionate narration and a punk attitude, irony and anger. They describe it as a “Gloomy inventory and review of the setbacks of a kamikaze humanity which seems to be heading straight towards catastrophe.”

Meanwhile, the video - a whirlwind of images that bears repeated watching in case you missed anything, manages to look simultaneously like a slickly produced marketing campaign and a hand-made video collage made from flicking through cable TV channels.

The notes on the video contents make a pretty detailed read:

Millitary parade at the Kremlin, military parade in North Korea, 14th July military parade, influencers in Dubai, abattoirs, Amazon deforestation, self-defence classes, Patrick and Isabelle Balkany (Former mayor of Levallois-Perret who was sentenced to four years in prison for tax evasion), the CRS (French riot police) in Burger King, champagne in a night club, rich people in Courcheval, the CRS in the Jungle camp in Calais, the CRS with the Gilets Jaunes, military parade in China, the G7, security guards in France, the war in Iraq, Americans and pollution, pollution in India, the worst prisons in America, the Ku Klux Klan, America’s passion for firearms, women in Saudi Arabia, the Le Pen/Darmanin debate, Black Friday in France, England and the USA, fights outside night clubs, jet skis and yachts, Russians fighting, Donal Trumo visiting the Queen of England, Altice (French media/communications company) on the stock market, boat party, Cop 27, famine in Africa, Palestine, Didier Lallement (politician and former Paris Chief of Police) , Syria, refugees on the Turkish border, the CRS, (former Prime Minister) François Fillon

Gwendoline’s debut LP Après C’est Gobelet! was released in 2020 and re-issued two years later, with Saint​-​Valentin released as a stand-alone track in February this year.

C'est à moi ça is released on March 1 2024. Keep a note of it for your album of the year list for this time next year.