Camille: the French pop animal unafraid to get physical

Camille performing

A Camille concert is an extraordinary experience. Over two hours, the maverick singer writhes barefoot on the floor, dances like a galloping horse, howls like a wolf, sings audacious harmonies with a trio of backing vocalists and hits the kind of high notes that might only be audible to dogs. She sings in English about adultery and ecology; she sings in French about the futility of planting a Twix or a Mars bar in the soil, or how pregnancy turns a man’s semen into milk. She starts her set with a mournful, melismatic reading of Joni Mitchell’s Blue and reaches a truly bestial climax with a gospel punk version of the Dead Kennedys’ Too Drunk to Fuck.In an Anglo-American pop world that has traditionally treated French pop with a mixture of contempt and ridicule, Camille Dalmais might have been invented specifically to puncture this anglophone arrogance. In the 15 years since her debut album, Le Sac des Filles, audiences around the world have been enthralled by her [ . . . ] More at: Camille: the French pop animal unafraid to get physical | Music | The Guardian

Vive Les Gourmands! How Six American Expats In Paris Changed How We Eat : The Salt : NPR

Julia Child
Julia Child

Mid-twentieth century Paris evokes images of Left Bank intellectuals earnestly discussing existentialism over demitasses of coffee. But the city was also home to a celebrated food scene that drew gastronomes from around the world. The Gourmands’ Way: Six Americans in Paris and the Birth of a New Gastronomy chronicles the Parisian adventures of beloved TV chef Julia Child, New Yorker writer A. J. Liebling, wine merchant and impresario Alexis Lichine, artist and cookbook writer Richard Olney, novelist M.F.K. Fisher, and companion and muse of Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas.This ragtag band of passionate epicureans dove headlong into French culinary culture, reveling in its sumptuous delicacies. They then brought back many of the recipes and ideas about cooking and eating to the U.S. Roast partridge, calf’s brains gratin, foie gras rissolettes (small patties), epic multi-course banquets washed down with sundry wines, spirits and liqueurs —The Gourmand’s Way bristles with the lavish fare of mid-twentieth century Paris [ . . . ] More: Vive Les Gourmands! How Six American Expats In Paris Changed How We Eat : The Salt : NPR