Album Review: Carla Bruni- Little French Songs Slant Magazine by Ted Scheinman Published on April 16, 2013

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Album Review: Carla Bruni- Little French Songs Slant Magazine By Ted Scheinman Published on April 16, 2013 Though Carla Bruni has never failed to enchant front-page editors at European tabloids, her duties as first lady of France precluded her efforts as an artiste in various media—the exception being a spin 'round the Rodin Museum in Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris. These days, thanks to François Hollande, Bruni has a lot of time to spare. Few heads will turn at another album in homage to French pop of the 1960s (her fourth such), but it's important to note how playful Bruni is on Little French Songs, an album that exudes a sense of liberation. "Liberté, tu dois bien exister," she sings on "Liberté." (Translation: "Liberty, you simply must exist.") The album's charm is in Bruni's ability to transmit this school's-out-for-summer vibe via patter songs, blasé scats, and conversational dips into her lower register—a confessional, near-sultry technique that evokes an intimacy in keeping with the album's self-conscious but also self- effacing title. The songs here are originals, all but two credited to Bruni alone, including "Le Pingouin," a delightful, chatty little parable, "Darling," a well-turned elegy, and "La Valse Posthume," in which Bruni offers tips on what to do with your feet—tips that work in other situations as well. Throughout, Bruni casually lifts snatches from tunes by her referents, not just Serge Gainsbourg and Edith Piaf, but Charles Aznavour and even Joni Mitchell. These borrowings are to be expected in an homage, and Bruni repurposes them to fine effect in sinusoidal melodies that feel drawn from some forgotten LP in an attic in the Latin Quarter, just before 1968 and all that messy business in Paris. Bruni deserves points for not phoning it in: Given her status as de facto European royalty, she could have re-recorded "La Vie en Rose," thrown in some filler, and called it a day. At the same time, she seems aware of her limits. Her upper register isn't terribly strong, so she treads with care, singing with a youthful, tentative precision. Her attitudinal strength as a singer lies in the conversational asides, the conjured sense of closeness. If "Chez Keith et Anita" doesn't deliver the juicy anecdotes about Riviera depravity you might expect from the title, "Lune" offers a touching bit of allegro balladry in a contralto so confident it almost raises goosebumps. Almost. This isn't Bruni's day job (not that she's ever had a day job), and she knows it. But her sense of humor, her impetuous moments at the mic, and her sheer likeability as a vocalist carry Little French Songs, a modestly scaled disc from an otherwise larger-than-life celebrity. http://www.slantmagazine.com/music/review/carla-bruni-little-french-songs .

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Carla Bruni Announces New Album 434.61 Kb
Carla Bruni Announces New Album ‘French Touch’ To Be Released on October 6th via Decca Records First Single, Cover of Depeche Mode’s ‘Enjoy The Silence’ Available Now Photo credit: Matthieu Zazzo Internationally acclaimed singer-songwriter Carla Bruni announces the release of her 5th studio album, an English-language collection of cover songs produced by legendary producer, composer and musician David Foster entitled ‘French Touch’, released on October 6th via Decca Records. Click Here for the stunning video (directed by Fabienne Berthaud) for first single ‘Enjoy The Silence’, a stripped down and intimate rendition of the Depeche Mode classic, which premiered on Billboard.com accompanied by an interview with Carla. The song is available now on all digital and streaming services carlabruni.lnk.to/EnjoyTheSilence Since her youth, Carla has assembled a trove of all-time sentimental favourites—pop songs forever associated with a person or place or moment in time, the sort of records that she says, borrowing the French term for love at first sight, “have been a coup de foudre.” The album gives credence to its title, richly melodic, warm yet minimal, and often slyly playful – all the covers in this collection have been given that ‘French Touch’, and still have all the universal appeal of their originals, albeit with a sultry flavour all their own. 7 Broadbent Close, Highgate Village, London, N6 5JW t 020 3213 0135 f 020 8348 7776 e [email protected] www.republicmedia.net @republic_media Take the lead single, ‘Enjoy the Silence’. Depeche Mode’s dark yet soaring 1990 pop classic is the sort of anthem most musicians wouldn’t dare mess with—“a song that doesn’t need a cover,” as Carla puts it—yet the ‘French Touch’ take is something else altogether.
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