Feu! Chatterton: Three nights at L'Olympia

 The first of three sold-out nights at the Olympia in Paris gets underway tonight for the mightly Feu!

Chatterton, marking the end of their tour promoting their Palais d'argile album.

While Palais d'argile is the band's third album, last month saw the release of the double album Live à Paris 2022, recorded at the  Zénith de Paris on April 14 last year.

There's a ten-track double vinyl release, a limited edition four-disc vinyl version of the collection which expands it to 18 tracks, all these tracks included on the double CD version.

There are tracks from their previous three albums, from their remarkable 2015 debut Ici le jour (a tout enseveli) like Côte Concorde, Boeing and La Malinche, some from 2018's L'Oiseleur including Souvenir and Sari D'Orcino, but material from Palais d'argile obviously dominates, which is frankly no bad thing given that the album is one of the best releases in recent years.

Among the tracks is a previously unreleased version of  L'Affiche Rouge, a song originally by Léo Ferré based on a text by surrealist poet Louis Aragon.

It's been astonishing to see Feu! Chatterton's rise, fulfilling the promise of their early work. A band who have always been articulate yet approachable, grounded in the traditions of French chanson but unafraid to take things in a new modern direction.

Feu! Chatterton are an extraordinary band who have enjoyed an extraordinary 12 months. The Palais d'argile tour may be coming to an end, but hopefully, we can look forward to more activity in 2023.

Woodkid covers Cabrel

Although I somehow didn't get round to organising any kind of formal award ceremony in the closing months of last year, Woodkid's second album S16 was probably this blog's album of the year. 

It's an album that somehow fitted perfectly with the strange year we had. For all the grandeur of the textures he plays with, there's fragile humanity at the centre of it. While apparently inhuman and gigantic forces surround us and bewilder us, rather than simply focusing on the large-scale drama and celebrating it, his focus remains on the human dimension throughout.

For all the industrial-scale mechanics of Goliath, with its epic orchestral and electronic flavours, it asks simple personal questions: Where are you going boy? How did you get so lost?  Amidst the apparently overwhelming situation, with its depersonalising, uncertain and strange unfamiliarity, these questions remain pertinent and unanswered.

Meanwhile, the In your likeness video is set in the inhospitable and unfamiliar environment of an oil rig, lit as strangely as an alien space station in a Hollywood movie. But a song that focuses on one human voice, illuminating the darkness like a distress flare.

A lot of us have been moving towards personal reflection in a year that has seen us confronted by circumstances that are alien to us, frightening and beyond our control. A year where, for many of us, what once were optimistic horizons have become distant battlefields.

With his cover of Francis Cabrel's things are even more personal. The song by Cabrel from his 1994 Samedi soir sur la Terre is one of the songwriter's key works, a love song to his partner and to his child. With Woodkid's version, almost everything is stripped away, the focus is on voice on piano, and it's incredibly affecting.

If Cabrel was at the time thought to be one of the standard-bearers for the French chanson tradition, Woodkid has quietly established his own claim to the title.

Bénabar: La forêt

A video for the track La forêt, a song from Bénabar's most recent album Inspiré de faits réels.

The clip, a tasteful black and white affair, covers the singer's recent tour.

Inspiré de faits réels was released in August last year, following his  Bénéfices du doute collection from 2011. The singles Paris By Night and Le Regard preceded its release.

Bénabar is one of the contemporary singer songwriters in France whose influence by traditionla Chanson style is the most explicit.

Since the release of his 1997 debut  La p'tite monnaie, he's had four platinum albums in France and won a Victoires de la Musique award for Best male artist in 2007.

He's got live dates around France over the next few months, with festival dates over the summer.

Charles Trenet: Chanson pour Noël

Another archive French Christmas hit, this time by Charles Trenet, one of France's most famous singers of the 20th century.

The song was originally released in 1956.

Trenet is probably best known for his hit La Mer, which became known to an English speaking audience under the title Beyond The Sea.

His career, however, began before the Second World War, eventually retiring from singing in 1975.

He however returned in 1981, making occasional re-appearances and recordings, and album emerging in 1999 entitled Les poètes descendent dans la rue.

He eventually died in 2001, a true legend of old school French chanson.

Christophe: Acoustic

An outstanding performance on Acoustic, the weekly music programme on French TV channel TV5Monde,  by Christophe, a French performer who quite rightly merits being described as legendary.

A performer who first came to prominence in the 1960s, his career has seen troughs and peaks since, with lengthy times away from the music scene.

Last year saw the release of the album Paradis retrouvé, and this year the collection entitled Intime was released at the end of March.

Like the Acoustic performance, it features stripped-down versionso fsome of his best known songs.

Songs included in the performance are Les paradis perdus,  Les mots bleus, Les marionnettes, Le beau bizarre and Aline.

Dominique A: Rendez Nous Les Lumières

A great track by Dominique A, Rendez Nous Les Lumières, from his recently-released new album.

The song is available on his ninth album, Vers Les Lueurs, which has been available in France since March 26.

Dominique A has been releasing work since the early 90s and is one of France's most acclaimed songwriters.

He has worked with Françoiz Breut, writing many of her songs, and has also writted for Jeanne Balibar and Jane Birkin, and worked with Yann Tiersen. Calexico and Francois and the Atlas Mountains have covered his songs.

The song L'été Summer by Julien Doré that I featured on this blog plast year was one of his songs, and his cover of Elli & Jacno's Je T'aime Tant was a highlight of last year's Jacno Future tribute album.

His new album follows his 2009 release La Musique which along with his other earlier albums was recently re-mastered and re-issued with a bonus disc and extra tracks.

Dominique A is touring France in April, and also has festival dates over the summer in France, Spain and Belgium.He plays the Casino de Paris on June 19.

Rétro- Serge Gainsbourg: L'eau à la Bouche

I thought that following a link to the video of Lulu Gainsbourg's version of L'eau à la Bouche I really had to link to his father's original.

The original a latin influenced jazz number came out in 1960, the title song for a romantic comedy film originally released on a soundtrack EP.

It comes very much from the time in his career when Gainsbourg was more influenced by jazz than by pop, a field he was very soon to dominate for the rest of the decade.

The song is probably better remembered than the film, Serge himself continuing to perform it even in the later days of his career.

Marc Almond Jacque Brel radio documentary

A quick entry today to point you to part one of Marc Almond's radio documentary about Jacques Brel, that was broadcast on BBC Radio two on Tuesday.

Marc Almond invites Radio 2 listeners to explore the music and unconventional life of one of France's most revered singer-songwriters - Jacques Brel.


Almond has been a great interpreter of Brel's work in English, his Jacques album released in '89 collects them together. His later album Absinthe collects English versions of frnch songs by others.

You can catch up on the documentary here>

Part two is on air n March 23, the final part the following week.

Here's a clip of Marc Almond, from his Marc and the Mambas incarnation performing 'If you go away' Live on the Jonathan Ross show from 1989.

Jean Ferrat

I have been thinking about launching a blog that focuses on French music for a while now, a blog aimed at hopefully furthering the popularity of French music to an anglophone audience.

The music scene in France is amazing. From hip hop to prog rock, chanson and folk, it's a huge worl that is largely ignored by the media this side of the channel. Time to do something to redress the balance.

Despite having the idea some time ago, I kept putting it off, but I got a bit of a reminder today about the need for this kind of thing. Jean Ferrat, one of the last giants of French chanson, died at the weekend, and despite being one of the most significant voices in france, he remained unknown outwith a small audience in the UK.

A Communist sympathiser who was praised by President Sarkozy for his "unyielding conception of French song", Ferrat's career from the 60s onwards put him up with the likes of Jacques Brel and Georges Brassens. Some songs were banned for their politics, (Potempkine, Ma France) others - such as his adaptations of the work of Louis Aragon (Aimer à perdre la raison) - amongst the finest examples poetry and song together in the French language.







As French TV legend Michel Drucker said: "A whole part of France, a whole generation is mourning today,"

"There were Brel, Brassens, (Leo) Ferré and then there was Jean. He was the last of the Mohicans."