What an arresting cover, the naked singer holding up the ace of hearts and the inevitable ace of spades, “the most powerful cards in the deck”, as weathered metaphors for the prismed verve contained therein, compass points for the emotional minefield of first love, first heartbreak and the limbo between.
That metered percussive of “Amour Fou” scaffolding those Theseus-threading guitars, that curling theremin-like mirage that glows around Florence Giroud’s vocals. Sung in her native language, lyrically my schoolboy French is missing a lot of the finer details; but boy her voice is lovely, skips effortlessly on through. Kind of half intoned / fluidly spoken, her words indelibly burn, cling loosely to the projected mood, suddenly find themselves pleasantly swept up by those melodic thermals.
A sunny dispersion that sparks in ambering accents and folding contours, throws accelerate on the stippled slap of “Mortel” that sees Giroud’s vocals possessively tumble to glints of “Histoire De Melody” hypnotically caught then bayoneted in sizzling synthetics. Skulks a hushed seduction on ‘La Chambre De La Fumée Et Des Fleurs’ as that hazy halo of instrumentation licks the word fall, sways smokily to that cellar-stepped bass. A dark delight that leads to “Moments In Love,” a surprise homage to the Art Of Noise original re-constituted with a William Blake twist. Its origins are uprooted to flow more dub-like in a brushed reggae-like elegance spiked in a loose concussive unwind.Sunflowers a diffusing light that “Kremer & Bergeret” spectrally feasts on in lush spiralling harmonies and elasticated funk, all ending on a Durutti Column-esque high of “Le Magnifique”.
Another priceless ZamZam find for sure.
-Michael Rodham-Heaps-
