I've been wondering whether to include these Music Week promo CDs as bona fide items in my collection. Apart from anything else, my copies of the magazine over the last six months are still in their polythene wrappers, and I've now cancelled my subscription to stop the pile growing any larger.
But among the tiresome Hear Iceland, Soundtrack to the Highlands and Islands and Dudley & Sandwell Big Beats, I make an exception for the French Talent series. Because I think that a lot of interesting music is coming out of France at the moment; more so than other European countries, and more so than was the case with France in the past. I even subscribe to the French Vibes podcast.
If you try and represent the whole popular music output of a country like France on one CD, you're bound to get some crap in the mix. Predictably that's when they sing in English and try to sound like angry rockers. But let's concentrate on the good bits, starting with the most French.
Emily Loizeau does the French chanson updated tastefully (i.e. not very much) for the 21st Century. I prefer l'autre Emilie, Emilie Simon, who does a variety of electropop that I imagine being like a French analogue of Róisín Murphy's latest album, although I haven't heard it. Finally among the women, there's a track from Carla Bruni's second album. I downloaded her first two albums from emusic.com and grew to like them while it was still possible to put her appalling taste in men to the back of your mind (not that the short, right wing politician is the worst of them — Eric Clapton and Donald Trump are probably the leading contenders for that distinction). I know it's kind of objectionable to judge a woman's music on the basis of the lovers she keeps, but somehow they reflect onto her character and thence onto the work. Anyway, all the reviews I saw of her third album said it was weaker than the earlier ones.
I guess France's relationship with its former African colonies is probably as ambivalent and equivocal as that of other colonial powers, but they do seem to have the capacitance to embrace francophone music from that continent. Rachid Taha is always good value, and his track on this compilation is unsurprisingly good and surprisingly French. I hadn't heard of Mamani Keita before (is she related to Salif?), but have tagged her on Last.fm for more listening. I really like the song by Moussu T e lei Jovents: again I thought it sounded very French, but according to their website they're mixing together music from many origins. It's no surprise to find that they featured heavily on Andy Kershaw's programme from Marseille.
French rap and hip-hop often sounds better to my ears than its British equivalents, and the TTC track on this CD is no exception to this. But the real surprise find is the track by I Love UFO. They sound a bit like a French Faust: unusually German and also aggressive without sounding gauche.
Discogs entry for this album
Listen to this album in part at Last.fm
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