Did you say new wave ?

A pal living in Spain and another in Brussels told me that my modest blog was starting to be red worldwide.
So much pressure over my tiny shoulders…
Well I’ll try to post here in English more often, but you know when you come back from work it’s hard to start writing new reviews and chronicles.

In the objective to spread out there some cool musical knowledge, I’ll try to talk about French (or European) musical and cultural exceptions…if I consider them valuable.
If you know some cool bands in others countries, please let me know, I’m eager to discover new pop rock sensations that you’ve heard about.

Let’s get back to the music; the band is called Nouvelle Vague (New Wave in English).
All the concept of this collective is to play some new wave and Punk bands covers, in a bossa nova, pop, electro and definitely jazzy way.
The result is quite surprising.
All the great bands like the Clash, the Undertones, the Dead Kennedys, XTC, Joy Division, the Cure, and PIL… of this period are covered.

Some people said many things about this project like denaturalisation, jeopardy of the sacred punk rock heritage, a classy amusement or a funnier one “a stylish arty joke for bobos”.
The last one is not totally false but you know if you stop listening music because of the average audience, I’d certainly burn my collection of Blondie (again), Wampas and Ramones (new idols of the annoying more than threatening Parisian baby rockers) records.
This new approach brings a brand new sound to famous songs like “Guns of Brixton”
A realistic and dramatically banal scene of everyday life becomes a slow cynic jazz anthem, like this guy lying on the pavement, shot to death.

In the case of “Love Will Tear Us Apart”, the unfortunately conventional evidence of arty Parisian good taste, is supported by some shiny Caribbean percussions, a girl is taking the micro and sings her shattered love in a delicate and sensitive way.
If the regretted Ian Curtis would have heard that before, well maybe the rock history could have been richer.

Nevertheless, don’t think that is album is just an accumulation of sad and depressing songs always dealing with death and deceived love.

The cover of the Dead Kennedys “Too Drunk to fuck” is a real breeze of fresh air: a tipsy girl is telling you about her crazy night, helped by the some realistic party noises and some rich vocabulary that you’ll recognize if you’re used to French parties.

“This Is Not A Love song” sang years ago by the great John Lydon himself is not a pust punk joke anymore but a great slow beat love song, and almost 30 years after finally smoothly sung.
“Teenage kicks”, already mentioned in this blog sounds like a Buena Vista Social club bossa nova composition.

Yes, no more great booming drum parts or raging and aggressive guitars to carry these beautiful texts, but acoustics guitars, congas, keyboards, marimbas, accordion, and exotic night noises.
You’re not standing in the grey and freezing streets of the Anglo saxon world anymore but on the sunny beaches of Cuba, Brazil or Mexico.
Marc Collin and Olivier Libaux already had a great idea trying to give a new style to those songs by mixing influencees, but the second one is to give the mic’ to several talented French females singers, using perfectly their sexy and groovy voice tone among them, Camille (better than usal), Mélanie Plain or Marina.

Finally, despite all their defaults, those punks knew how to write some poetry, to paraphrase someone, dancing on a stash of shit.

Now you can do it on a stash of sand.