Facts continue to change their shape: 6/1 show

Lazy me... or maybe just too much work, or something. I'm posting this very late, though as usual I'm backdating it to the date of the show. Sorry for anyone who was waiting around for it.

A few things I played were CDs I bought while in France.

Camille is someone my friend Graziella told me about in 2005, when her album came out. I didn't buy it at the time, but the name stayed in my head, and I heard her mentioned from time to time (most recently by Lester, an artist at Lillstreet who's gotten into French pop). This time, Graziella played me a song from her iPod and I decided to get the CD. It's good. After listening to it over and over again in the car as we drove around Périgord with only 5 CDs, it struck me that the sound is heavily influenced by Afropop, which is maybe a little unexpected. It reminds me of the Afro-Belgian group Zap Mama (or at least, their early work – the band is still around but I don't know what they sound like). The contrast is that Camille has the sort of high-pitched girlish vocal style that seems common among French femail singers. Anyway, the song I played is the one Graziella played for me on her iPod, and it's one of the strongest on the album. It's almost acapella, but with the addition of electric base, and the vocal sounds include squeals and raspberries, which makes me think of Björk. (I've been wondering to myself – did my friend Lynn also recommend Camille to me? Or am I getting mixed up because her middle name is Camille? Not sure...)

Olivia Ruiz was another French artist recommended by Graziella, though she didn't specify an album, so I got an earlier one that was cheaper. (New French CDs are shockingly expensive, but the store we go to also has used CDs, and we buy those when we can.) Olivia Ruiz's album is not 100% successful, but it has a number of very good songs. She too has that sort of high-pitched girlish vocal style, but much less of an Afropop influence. Instead, Ruiz plays with a number of styles, including traditional French music, American 50's pop, and musicals. Some songs veer too close to that French pop sound of the 80's that was so terrible, but in general I like the album. The song I played, J'Aime Pas L'Amour, has a touch of the tango to it, but breaks into guitars in the middle.

Uztaglote was my own find. The store we went to, Gilbert Joseph, had a number of CDs set up in listening stations, and Uztaglote was one of them. Near as I can tell, they are an independent release; I can't quite identify the label, though. (By which I mean, I actually can't find the name on the CD.) They hew more closely to traditional French café music, but they are a bit tongue-in-cheek at the same time. I haven't fully decyphered the lyrics of the song I played, except that it has to do with wanting a doll. It sounds a bit like café music and a bit like new wave.

*: new stuff
(r): requests

Artist	Song	Album	Label
The Talking Heads	Crosseyed and Painless	Remain in Light	Sire
Kate Bush	Eat the Music	The Red Shoes	Columbia
*Slavic Soul Party	Šiško's Blues	Technochek Collision	Barbes
*Montag	No One Else	Going Places	Carpark
Andrew Bird	Measuring Cups	The Mysterious Production of Eggs	Righteous Babe
Os Mutantes	Panis et Circensis	Tropicália: ou Panis et Circensis	Universal
*Mary Timony Band	Sharpshooter	The Shapes We Make	Kill Rock Stars
Camille	Ta douleur	Le fil	SCPP/Virgin
Deee-Lite	What Is Love?	World Clique	Elektra
*Electrelane	Tram 21	No Shouts, No Calls	Too Pure
*Battles	Race: In	Mirrored	WARP
Quasar Wut-Wut	Enola Gay	Taro Sound	Glorious Noise
The Judybats	Scarlett	Pain Makes You Beautiful	Sire
Puffy Ami Yumi	Boogie Woogie No. 5	Hi Hi Puffy Ami Yumi soundtrack	Epic
Ted Leo + the Pharmacists	Me and Mia	Shake the Sheets	Lookout
Eurythmics	This is the House	Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)	RCA
Olivia Ruiz	J'aime pas l'amour	J'aime pas l'amour	Polydor
*Wilco	Either Way	Sky Blue Sky	Nonesuch
(r)The Decemberists	Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then)	The Crane Wife
*Jana Hunter	Vultures	There's No Home	Gnomonsong
Bobby Conn	Anybody	King for a Day	Thrill Jockey
Har Mar Superstar	Body Request	The Handler	Thrill Jockey
*Watchers	Mercenary Birds	Vampire Driver	Gem Blandsten
*Fennesz Sakamoto	Cendre	Cendre	Touch
Aretha Franklin	All Night Long	Sweet Bitter Love	Columbia
*Elliott Smith	New Disaster	New Moon	Kill Rock Stars
Canasta	Sympathetic Vibrations	We Were Set Up	Broken Middle C
The Futureheads	Decent Days and Nights	The Futureheads	Sire
Each Other	Soft Cuffs	Each Other	Birds Go South
*Rufus Wainwright	Tiergarten	Release the Stars	Geffen
Sean Lennon	Queue	Into the Sun	Grand Royal
Sister Vanilla	K to Be Lost	Little Pop Rock	Chemikal Underground
*Uztaglote	La Poupée	La Liberation des Corps	R
Jens Lekman	The Wrong Hands	Oh You're So Silent, Jens	Secretly Canadian
*Black Moth Super Rainbow	Sun Lips	Dandelion Gum	Graveface
*Parts and Labor	Vision of Repair	Mapmaker	Jagjaguwar/Brah
The Scissor Girls	EvrxbdxLvsaGdMxstrx	To: The Imaginary Layer on Skeletons	Quinnah
*Frog Eyes	Evil Energy, the ill twin of...	Tears of the Valedictorian	Absolutely Kosher
The Shangri-La's	Trains from Kansas City	The Myrmidons of Melodrama	RPM
The Headlights	Century	The Enemies	Polyvinyl
Adam and the Ants	Killer in the Home	Kings of the Wild Frontier	Columbia
*The Race	Walls	Ice Station	Flameshovel
Brian Wilson	Roll Plymouth Rock	Smile	Nonesuch
They Might Be Giants	Particle Man	Flood

Labels: music, playlists

posted by Tony at 6:25 PM