Douze fois par an, Jeanne Cherhal
jqr | Brooklyn | 03/14/2005
(5 out of 5 stars)
"This record immediately grabbed me and hasn't let go yet, some six months after I first got it. Jeanne Cherhal sounds somewhat like Nellie McKay, and both of them, in fact, studied mallet percussion like xylophones in school. Where Nellie McKay is sly and ironic, Jeanne Cherhal puts her all into every song and sings with passion and verve.
The masterpiece is "Super 8." It's a simple pop song about seeing your life flash before your eyes in your last moments, "Me, I'd like a Super 8 film / with blurry sun / my friends on the lawn, my sister too / scenes at random but quiet." Jeanne then goes on to wonder about what suicides see, about projectionists, about the girl who sells the popcorn, and then if that film includes the parts of your life you already slept through. I've listened to a lot of pop songs in my time, but I don't think I've ever heard one that takes the subject of death so earnestly and so directly, without irony or distance.
But wait, there's more! Jeanne also supplies a beautiful, sweet and rueful Christmas song (Ca sent le sapin) and the gorgeous, piano-and-acoustic-bass accompanied "Sad Love Song" ("My love is a cry, immense and uninterrupted, won't it ever stop?") and the best, most honest-sounding song I've ever heard about menstruation ("That's what it's like to be a woman, a being of flesh and blood.")
The arrangements are intimate without being cozy; every song sounds different. Those who don't speak French will still get the idea, I think, and enjoy her beautiful voice. For those who do, this is a record that punctures the old myth of European pop music as being trashy, fake-sounding, and overproduced."
Track Listings (12) - Disc #1