Phoenix in the garden: pink shirt check, skinny pants check, manorexia check, brooding love pop lyrics check.

At Forever 21 you can buy t-shirts that say I heart French boys. Does this kill you like it kills me?

Last Saturday, my sketchy friend K and I took in the sold out Phoenix concert.  It’s always quite funny to go to an all-ages event because half of the population could be either your a) intern or b) children…I mean, if you were a child-bride. 

The french indie-pop rockers put on a stellar show as the lead singer thrashed around stage and threw his mic into the air.  The group was humbled by their fan appreciation in broken english,  “Ahh, every time we come here, the crowd gets biggger an’ bigger.  We do not expect everyone to sing lyrics. Zank you. Merci beaucoup.”  Although he spaced out on ‘Too Young’ and forgot some of the words, I attribute to him wondering, ‘Ah, what am I singing again?’

If you like Phoenix, why not sample some tracks from Friendly Fires or Tahiti 80?  And as an avid concert goer, here are some tips to live by to enjoy your concert experience.

1. Early Bird Gets the Worm – Go early enough to see the opening act, only if you want to see them.  Arriving a half hour into the doors opening guarantees you a pretty good spot to view the stage, allows time for a washroom break and to grab a drinkie-drink. 
2. Don’t Touch Me – Have respect for others personal space and no elbows out.  When maneuvering around other patrons, say ‘excuse me’ and ‘thank you’ when they part like the Red Sea.   
3. Think About Others – Dance if you wanna dance.  Sing if your voice isn’t like nails on a chalkboard. 
4. VIP Exit – Leave part way through the final encore song.  You can grab your coat and make a mad dash for the doors avoiding the crush of masses through the exit and out the parking lot.  Smart.

The quatuor of baby rockers may have grown up a bit, their music still has that same teen appeal!

But let’s not forget that same was said about the Beatles back in the 60’s! Hum.

BB Brunes are back with a sophomore album “Nico Teen Love” … although one can appreciate the wordsmith efforts, the title says a lot about the targeted audience of this well marketed Band. Big up to warner!

New video right below:

Essa estória de que o Air deu uma latinizada no som, sei não… Eu achei mais fofuras e candices eletrônicas de sempre. Mas ainda dá saudades dos dois primeiros albuns da banda menos preguiçosos[Moon Safari e 10.000hz Legend]. E boatos de que o duo vem ao Brasil têm surgido por ae…

Air – Tropical Disease
Air Site Oficial

Benjamin Biolay’s new album, La Superbe was released yesterday in France and I am officially jealous.  I want to buy it now, but being in North America, it looks like that will not be possible.  Let the waiting begin.  I have listened to the album’s title track over and over again, and I cannot get enough.

I discovered Benjamin Biolay’s music about 5 years ago, and ‘Négatif’ (2003) was the first album I purchased.  Since then, I have bought every single one of his albums.  Knowing that he is talented musician and composer is part of the attraction.  But really it’s that combination of deep, whisper-like voice, rich, melodic compositions, topped with brilliant songwriting that I am in love with.  Now, some may not buy into his half-whispered, half-spoken vocals.   Some say it’s hardly singing.  I think that is part of his charm.  When he sings, I pretend he is singing to me.  I like to think that he intended his music just for me.  It’s part of the dreamy quality of his work.  Truly, it is worthy of being listened to and enjoyed for what it is: a perfect musical cocktail, in the best French style.

I leave you with the video for ‘La Superbe’.  And remember, it’s all about the music.

If you are a fan of Benjamin Biolay, I recommend signing up to his newsletter via www.benjaminbiolay.com to get the latest news and even free music downloads from time to time.  You can also visit his MySpace page.

Francoise Hardy, from her album Ma Jeunesse Fout Le Camp released in 1967.

Accompanied by Jacques Denjean.

I had the chance to host one of their show in Dublin recently for the Let’s French … Festival and what a performance! The good crowd in a quaint venue made it even better…

Housse de Racket (Racket cover to be literal) are Victor Le Masne and Pierre Leroux ,Victor played drums for the Teenagers, Pierre played keyboards with Phoenix, they both played with Jean Benoit Dunckel from Air (for his solo project Darkel) and also Gonzales, Jean Claude Vannier, Brigitte Fontaine, just to name but a few.

Excellent musician and well known in the French Music Circuit, their own time has come…. Relax and Enjoy this new video!

Shameless plug of the day: you need new kicks! Go to Footlocker.com and use my code AFTOP515 and get 15% OFF any order!!

Or if you’re less of a Sneaker Pimp and more of an Internet Hustler, head on over to GoDaddy.com and get your dream domain – ladygagasucks.com – for only 7.49!! Just use my code TOP7 — go now and Heather will love you forever!

Synthpop is the subgenre of New Wave and Pop where the synthesizer is the dominant sound. Originated during the new wave – late 70s early 80s – and big time reemerged in the mid to late 2000s — which leads us to today’s show. We’re counting down the top 5 leading solo female singer/songwriter synthpop artists who use 80s-style synths and who embody a sort of futuristic, mythical, or generally outlandish fashion and performance style.

5. Alison Goldfrapp AKA Goldfrapp

4. Natasha Kahn AKA Bat for Lashes

3. Victoria Hesketh AKA Little Boots

2. Julie Budet AKA Yelle

1. Elly Jackson AKA La Roux

PS. Synthesizers are sexy.

Now it’s your turn! What female synthpop honies have you been geeking out to? Leave me your list as a comment below!!

This is it…. Recent news form the French Music Front has it that we should be expecting a new album from Charlotte Gainsbourg very shortly and we can also announce that you can download  her first track “IRM” for FREE.

Following the release of “555″ in 2006 with contributions from Neil Hannon, Air, Nigel Godrich and Jarvis Corcker; Serge’s daughter is taking an interesting turn with a new album produced by Beck….

The first single “Heaven can wait’ is out on October 19th but in the mean time check the Video Teaser below:

I was prepared for more garbage from Souchon, but this album track (how did this get on the playlist?) is surprisingly pleasant.  The whole song is bouncy in a swinging way.  Opens with a multi-tracked Souchon harmonizing with himself before a walking bass line and bouncy guitar show up to anchor the song.  All real instruments!  Maybe that’s why I like it.  The arrangement is nice, with different instruments breaking in for a bar or two.  The song is sung in English, the strings are nice, the main melody is pleasing: I really can’t complain on this one.  Enjoyable, although I can’t really imagine a time when I would want to put this on- a snowy day spent at home?  Picnic in the park?  For some reason it sounds like Christmas music to me.

Tiringly adult contemporary.  Soulless.  The bass has a nice whump to it by pairing it with the kick drum, and I like that synth sound, but Souchon is not a good songwriter to  me.  He’s got no mojo.  He buries the strangely snappy-sounding instruments, like sticking a bunch of shiny objects in a pile of mud.  And his voice is so thin and not soulful in the slightest.  This is like sub-Jimmy Buffett bar music for the most desperate or lazy situations only.

Did you hear?

• Nasa bombed the moon this morning. They deliberately launched two spacecrafts into the southpole around 3 a.m. I thought it was a bad idea, but I thought it might at least look amazing. Apparently there were no results that could be seen by the naked eye.

• Ghostface Killah releases the coolest-sounding album title of the year? The Wiz is my favorite movie so Ghostdini: The Wizard of Poetry In Emerald City is such a fun name. Check out reviews at  The Smoking Section and Pitchfork [& stream the whole album from the site]
• The Pixies are releasing limited edition CDs and downloads of a few of their European tour performances. You’ll have a chance to hear their 1989 album Doolittle professionally-recorded and played from beginning to end from stages in Amsterdam, Brussels and Paris.

  [link]

• Mixtape Riot posted up some swank french grooves from 60’s off of a compilation called Atomic Cafe.  They also put up a cool experimental video from French composer Pierre Henry called “Psyche Rock.” Check it out:

Well it’s good to see a band from Rennes (home of the infamous Transmusicales festival) on the front stage again… However in my honest opinion they were not the best contestants in this year’s CQFD competition promoting fresh new indie talents from France and generously supported by Les Inrocks.

But I ll make no further comments and let you make your own mind on it.

You can listen The Popopopops here and please do not hesitate to comment on it below.

Until next time take care….

These lazy day’s I’ve been having, have called for my French Pop playist. Which includes France Gall, and one of my style icons Françoise Hardy.

^Françoise Hardy

^France Gall

XO Enjoy

’till then,

Your fashion friend

Hello everyone. I apologize for being a bit lazy with updates over the last few weeks (I’m pretending that there is someone out there that gets super worried about my blog update schedule). I took a short vacation, then came back and almost immediately got laid off…and then, obviously, I had a few drinks. However, I’m back and now I have loads of free time, so expect a healthy number of new posts in the upcoming month(s).

More importantly, I’m happy to bestow on you the first in a planned monthly series of mix cd (or iTunes playlist?) downloads! The idea will be for each mix to cover some of my current favorite tracks, a few old classics, and some random stuff that fits nicely in-between to create a mildly cohesive whole. Like an Arby’s bacon cheddar sandwich, except that, in this case, Brian Eno is the bacon or whatever. As usual, the bulk of this stuff will be from random decades and genres, with very little of it being exciting newly released singles or anything that “the kids” might be talking about. Also, I can promise that none of it will EVER be U2. Not ever.

For the first mix, October 2009, I ended up with a interesting (if I do say so myself) balance between 60s female vocal pieces and British mod-revival and new wave stuff. Not sure why it happened that way – it just did. Of course, that’s just a quick summary, and there are lots of other goodies that don’t fix into either of those molds. I really hope that someone out there enjoys this! Let me know if you’ve got any questions or comments. Thanks for reading! (Download Slow, Slow Music’s October 2009 Mix).

1. Da-a-ance – The Lambrettas
2. The Feeling Is Right – Doris Duke
3. Fallin’ – Paul Burch
4. I’m On Fire – Dwight Twilley Band
5. I Love How You Love Me – The Paris Sisters
6. Happy Hour – The Housemartins
7. Sweet Touch of Love – Allen Toussaint
8. If It Weren’t for the Words – Edith Frost
9. You’re On My Mind – The Birds
10. Somethin’ Stupid – Nancy & Frank Sinatra
11. Come Here – Kath Bloom
12. Chains of Love – The Undertones
13. The First Cut Is the Deepest – P.P. Arnold & the Teenagers
14. Town Called Malice – The Jam
15. Every Little Bit Hurts – Brenda Holloway
16. Anti-Love Song – Betty Davis
17. Someday Someway – Marshall Crenshaw
18. Here Comes That Feeling – Brenda Lee
19. To Know Him Is to Love Him – The Teddy Bears
20. Le Chanson de Slogan – Serge Gainsbourg & Jane Birkin
21. Free You – Art of Fighting
22. I’m Falling – The Bluebells

Just a quick post with a low quality video to introduce THE YOLKS , a bit of fresh air on the French music circuit. Formed in 2007, The Yolks are soon to be the male quatuor en-vogue. I would say that their tunes have caught my attention for the intensity of their melodies more so than the maturity of their lyrics, but overall their first EP (just released) should hopefully get the attention of some shy A&R’s, especially “Stop Working” and “Temptation”.

One more thing, the keyboard player really looks like your man from the 118118 advert (for those lucky enough to be exposed to British TV advertising).

I strongly advise to listen to their myspace which seem the only way to stream their music right now as the video quality is quite poor.

At times during this project I’m glad I can’t understand French.  And here’s a good example of why not: if I had to guess, I would guess that the lyrics to this song are a spongy, soaking-wet ball of  bullshit about love and a relationship, just told in the spry poetry of the synth ballad.  A poor, half-gelled synth ballad, with a bland, flat mix, drums that, if not from a machine, are from a robot playing the drums, and unnecessary swelling vox that rub up against shrill grating synth sounds in the worst way.  Not my idea of fun; there’s not a whole lot I want to say about this song except that it’s pretty dull and it hurts to listen to.  Sounds like a forgotten single off the soundtrack to a terrible film.

A passionlessly pleasant bit of balladeering that calmly rocks along for about 5 minutes.  The bass line bumps along nicely, and I don’t mind the heavily treated guitar doing light funk riffs off to the side.  And I do like the break where there’s a soft woman voice singing and the whole things comes together in a basic way.   I feel the same way about the way the song starts, with everything coming in piece by piece.  That minimal niceness is better than the rest of the song deserves;  I would’ve preferred it if it just rolled along like that, instead of limply rocking through the chorus a bunch of times.  But ultimately  it’s just another medium-paced radio friendly song that I imagine gets heard most often in French supermarket chains.

Ugh.  Just ugh.  Starting with a terribly underwhelming drum track, this track establishes itself in a minute as a boring adult contemporary shitpile; a ballad gone wrong in the most tedious way.  Fuck the synths.  Fuck the sax.  This song is better left forgotten.  This is a song that live under the most mind-numbing soundtracks of tedious 80s films.  Ugh.

Chamfort is moving his way into the 90s here, and it sounds like it.  It’s dripping wet with the hallmarks of dawn-of-the-90s pop: annoying piano synth sounds and cheap wailing guitars up at the fucking front of the mix.  Even the drum samples sound like it…  not to say I’m averse.  Well, maybe to that chintzy piano line, but the the choppy synths are okay, and the strings I like.  The sound is just softer in that 90s way.  I guess the problem is that it’s just not exciting.  Maybe this should tell me that Chamfort (and many, many other musicians) is just keeping up with the times in a way that doesn’t suggest aesthetic decision making outside of the norm, whatever that may be.  It’s okay, but it has just enough oompf to be a decent pop song.

Now for the workout.  A very insistent drum track kicks this one off, and the up-and-down-stairs  synth melody is nice, but the chorus is where this song gets the kick.  When the bass kicks in and starts going low like it’s counting down, the chorus breaks open the song and confetti like pop bliss blows over the dancefloor.  It also moves from bit to bit; it’s not the same thing over and over.  Chamfort has the good sense to set up a beautiful pop chorus and then double it up nicely before dropping the song back into its normal pace.  The problem?  The compressed happiness of the chorus makes the rest of the song feel thin.  The melody is played over and over, but the shit is catchy, so it doesn’t wear on me too much; however, the extra two minutes of instrumental isn’t really doing anything for me, funk guitars or horn stabs.  But if I was on a dancefloor maybe I’d feel differently.

Cool and smoky and full of beautiful, watery synths.  This song hits right at the beginning with more atmospheric synth and jazzy horn.  Weak points: the very blah bass line, and the chorus (again!).  The chorus is a weak link;  it blows into this big dull mess.  I get the point- it’s supposed to be big and powerful; it just ends up being all over the place when I feel like it should be more focused and solid.  But still a very chill track.  It’s a song I want to listen to in complete darkness and let the being and the essence of it leak out.  It’s that feeling, you know?  And the way the sounds ends is nice- horn leading out, synth slowly deflating.  Not great, but perfect for a certain mood.

Bambou: just okay; interesting in parts.   The synth shimmers, the guitar is full of reverb, and it comes together like the jazzy second cousin of French synth pop.  Chamfort’s voice is alright, but the vocal melody is uninteresting.   The chorus especially is in a swing style, with some horn in there (real horn?  Sadly, I can’t even tell).  There’s something intriguing, though, in the way the synths are so high above the sort of funky low-end creaking of the bass synth.  It’s done well, and I guess that’s part of why I like 80s pop, maybe.

To wit: I’m not crazy about this one.  Tthe sum of its parts comes up short.  The song’s biggest crime is the unnecessary Japanese voiceover that does nothing for the song besides give it some “exotic” flavor.  Ugh.

Here’s the Bashung song that I like the most out of the three I have, the number one hit in France: Vertige de l’amour.  The reverb guitar that strikes alone at the beginning of the song had me apprehensive at first, but once the synth comes in the song really gets into its groove.  That wonderful (wonderful) synth melody climbs up and down and the sound (layered!) is just wonderful.  The guitar complements it perfectly (or is it the other way around?), with palm muted plunks breaking into surf guitar chords: slow and full of wonderful reverb.   My problem with the song is the chorus. The melody is not very strong, either on the instruments or Bashung’s voice, and everything gets put in a big pile of sound the is big and clunky.  It clashes with the very relaxed and sweet sound of the rest of the song.  Despite the misguided bombast, it’s still a sweet song.  The mix of sound in this sound really hits on a good note, and the  guitar stabs that end the song are great.

Bookended by two signifiers of 80s pop, cheesy drum machines and unnecessary saxophone, S.O.S. Amor grew on me.   It’s that strange and beautiful break-down: I’m a sucker for submarine-esque synth sounds, and the awesome nature of those bars really lifts this song up.  I’m even beginning to enjoy the up-and-down “funky” or “jazzy” sax and the almost-unrecognizable artifacts of funk in the guitars.  The song becomes more than the sum of its parts for me because it has the mysterious quality that I’ve felt in other 80s pop.  For some reason, The Human League’s Fascination is proving the biggest analogue here, although it might just be the one thing I can think of right now.  A large part of it is the quality of the synth, especially the spastic melody during the chorus, which would be DOA without it.  The robustness (although robust might be wildly inaccurate or non-descriptive here) of the synth is what makes it interesting.  Really, what some people feel might be overproduction of the 80s might also be its redemption.  If a synth is not interesting in its tambre, it’s going to lack the extra qualities that a real instrument brings to the sound itself.  Modulating (again, probably not the right word) the sound on a synthesizer brings the electronic instrument to a more expressive and gripping place.  Another strange touch: the weird squawking guitar bit near the end of the song.  It doesn’t need to be there, but the fact that it is there is a charming detail.

Bashung’s voice in this song is also way better than in Gaby oh! Gaby.  He sounds like a throaty, drunk frenchman, so really I can’t say what more I could want from him in this song; the vocal melody line is something I enjoyed.  The main sin of this song is, much like the last one I listened to, the sax solo limply pushing it’s way to the front of the line about  3/4 of the way through.  The gratuitous saxophone is the bane of 80s pop.

Also for your enjoyment: this video of a TV performance or promo of some kind.  The video quality is shit, but it is another fun artifact of the 80s experience, and it might partially explain the ridiculously stupid 45 cover.  Watch as Bashung “dances” around a bunch of white clothes starched up to look like an invisible person is inside them!  Watch as he strokes the ass of a woman dressed like club-going extraterrestrial!  Watch on:

Here at TWBITW, we have very strict criteria for weirdness. Start a fake French garage-rock band in New York? Not weird enough. Start a fake version of the fake French garage-rock band, using the same name? Now you’re talkin!

Details of what exactly went down are a bit sketchy, but we know this: at some point, various members of fake French band #1, Les Sans Culottes, got fed up with the band’s lead singer and ringleader, Clermont Ferrand, and decided to start their own fake French band instead. The problems arose when they decided to keep using the name Les Sans Culottes, even though Ferrand had already assembled a new band and was also performing around town as Les Sans Culottes. Ferrand (real name: Bill Carney) eventually took his old bandmates to court, where we can only imagine the judge was tempted to bitch-slap the whole fake French lot of them. The melee was ultimately resolved, however, with Ferrand able to keep calling his band Les Sans Culottes and the second crew of fake Frenchies rechristening themselves Nous Non Plus (which means something like “us no more”).

To make matters even more confusing, there’s also a NYC restaurant called Les Sans Culottes. The phrase, which literally translates to “those without underpants” or, more archaically, “those without knee-breeches,” was apparently originally coined to describe the poorly equipped conscripts of the French Revolutionary army in the late 1700’s.

Anyhoo, although we were bummed that the original incarnation of Les Sans Culottes broke up (we saw them live a few times and they were pretty great), it’s kinda nice to now have not one, but two fake French bands to choose from. Les Sans Culottes 2.0 still sounds like a cross between the B-52’s and a French Ramones; Nous Non Plus, for their part, have taken the music in more of a power-pop direction, but the silly Franglish lyrics still take center stage.

Links:

• Nous Non Plus official site
• Nous Non Plus MySpace
• Les Sans Culottes official site
• Les Sans Culottes MySpace