Baker’s DozenIn Place: Yann Tiersen’s Favourite Albums
Fred Bowler , November 2nd, 2016 09:56
With his ninth album, EUSA, out now, the French composer and multi-instrumentalist takes Fred Jage-Bowler from the Velvets to Bill Callahan via NEU!, Vashti Bunyan and Joanna Newsom on a tour of his favourite records
READ FULL STORY at Source: The Quietus | Features | Baker’s Dozen | In Place: Yann Tiersen’s Favourite Albums
I speak to Yann Tiersen a few hours before he is due to play the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, as he continues to tour his new album Eusa. A collection of ten piano songs originally released as sheet music, Tiersen decided to record the songs after playing them live. In the midst of his tour, I find Tiersen unwell with a miserable autumn cold. “At least I don’t have to sing tonight!” he laughs, before coughing and spluttering over the phone to me some more. Despite being so unwell that he clearly should be in bed with whatever the French equivalent of Lemsip is, he continues enthusiastically. Nothing, especially not a meagre cold, will stop him conveying the love he has for his latest project – a musical mapping of his home in Ushant.
It doesn’t seem like eighteen years since Tiersen’s 1998 solo album Le Phare, or fifteen years since 2001’s Bafta winning Amélie brought him into the musical consciousness of so many. Made up of tracks from his first three studio albums, La Valse Des Monstres (1995), Rue Des Cascades(1996) and the aforementioned Le Phare, the Amélie soundtrack felt like a love letter to the bustling Parisian area of Montmartre; Le Phare, by contrast, was an album where the remote, desolate landscape of Ushant inspired Tiersen to write in self-imposed seclusion on the island. Eusa, as it is known in the local Breton language, is again providing inspiration for Tiersen’s ninth studio album; however, rather than being merely inspired by Ushant, the album is Ushant, as Tiersen uses music to paint a vivid picture of his home landscape.
Chanson Du Jour November 1,2016 Jeanne Cherhal “Parfait Inconnu”
I love this oldie from Cherhal’s 2004 album 12 Far Pa An. I haven’t seen a reputable english translation for “Parfait Inconnu.” It is surely about neither a tall glass of ice cream, nor incontinence. I think the song is about falling in love with a “perfect stranger,” while knowing we don’t really know a damn thing about him/her. Or perhaps not…
Help with a traslation, mes amis?
Alex Bruel Flagstad Agnes Obel
Citizen of Glass
Play it Again Sam
Agnes Obel’s music would be the perfect soundtrack for a scary movie, but not a brutish modern one—her haunting chamber pop belongs in the world of old-fashioned spooky films like the 1940s classics “Cat People” and “The Uninvited.” (David Lynch is reportedly a fan, which makes sense.)
Citizen of Glass, the Danish singer’s wonderfully transfixing third outing, weaves old and new instruments, including strings, piano, mellotron and the Trautonium, an early 20th-century ancestor of the synthesizer, into a luminous backdrop for her eerily composed vocals. Poised and uneasy at once, Obel seems to be revisiting episodes of extreme distress from a distance, as if seeking to dull the trauma through calm reflection. As she declares in “It’s Happening Again,” “The past isn’t dead/It’s alive, it’s happening/In the back of my head.” The result is a beautiful album likely to soothe the dark night of the soul, or induce an anxiety attack.
Back in the summer of 2015, Irish troubadour Damien Rice gave a surprise late night concert on a Paris sidewalk. Despite Rice’s hoarse voice, and the occasional banging and clanking noise from his roadies hauling equipment, this petit concert video is quite beautiful. Listen to Damien’s french fans singing his english lyrics, as one unseen fan provides occasional excellent harmonies (was actress/singer/collaborator Mélanie Laurent among the crowd?) Love it.
Chanson Du Jour 10/30/2016 Yves Montand – Les Feuilles Mortes
Looking outside the cafe window on Blackstone Boulevard, multi-colored leaves are swirling about Lippit Park. Autumn seems fully arrived, and this beautiful melody came to mind.
“The Autumn Leaves” is a jazz standard covered by Harry James, Doris Day, Chet Baker, Bill Evans, Erroll Garner and many others.
The song originated in France in 1941 as “Les Feuilles Mortes.” It was composed by Hungarian-French composer Joseph Kosma and lyrics by poet French Jacques Prévert.
The song and was made popular by the cool singing Yves Montand. This clip appears to be from a film – if you know the title, please leave a comment.
Pas De Merde 