Charlotte Gainsbourg - 5:55

I suppose there's no need to spend too much time blogging about Ms. Gainsbourg's new CD, 5:55, since this is probably the most blogged about CD of the moment. But I have listened to it about 10 times in the last couple of weeks and it keeps getting better and better. The music is provided by Air, the lyrics by Neil Hannon and Jarvis Cocker, and she is the daughter of legendary french pop dude Serge Gainsbourg. Of course if you frequent other music blogs than you already know this. Her breathy vocals are performed almost at a whisper, and in some cases she comes across as sort of a female Leonard Cohen. You blog readers probably already know this too. Yep, she's all over the blogosphere but unlike the Voxtrot's, Tokyo Police Club's and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's out there, Charlotte fully deserves it. She has an incredibly beautiful and slumberous voice and her songs expose an air of enchantment that is not readily available in indie rock today. "Beauty Mark," for example, is one of the best songs of the year. The deepness of the following description: "this little death / this mark of sin / forever printed on my skin / i save it for you," speaks to me of a woman deeply scorned but still having trouble letting go, completely. The album is deep, and although she may not have had much of a share in writing it, she DEFINITELY SELLS IT. So although I don't necessarily urge you to follow the advice of EVERY music blogger out there, this time I do. They're all correct. She is great. This CD is perfection.

Download:
AF607105 mp3

Visit Charlotte Gainsbourg's myspace.
Purchase "5:55" on Amazon.ca.

Feist - The Reminder

Once again, it seems that I’ve been a little bit blog-lazy lately, but I assure you that one of the reasons for this is the fact that this blog is the only area of my life that has been lazy as of late. However, another reason for my lack of blogation (sweet made up word!) is the fact that some of my favourite artists have been releasing new albums that, for me, have been less than blog-worthy. Bright Eyes, for example, has given me a couple of my all-time favourite albums in the past, but the new one has Conor sounding way too polished and over-produced for my liking and I’ve tried giving it the time of day but it just simply refuses to grow on me. Not to mention the fact that the subject matter really makes me a bit uncomfortable. And from the prolific to the fun, Fountains of Wayne, have always been the masters of crafting the ridiculously catchy pop song, but I have to admit, “Traffic and Weather” just gets a bit too silly. I enjoy a well-placed pop culture reference as much as the next guy, but lyricist Adam Schlesinger simply went a bit overboard on this one, (name-dropping ‘King of Queens,’ ‘Guns N Roses,’ and ‘Carl Reiner,’ just to name a few.)

Thank goodness for Leslie Feist. She also released a new one this past week, and thankfully it is up to her usual standards as far as I’m concerned. It’s funny, because I was actually starting to get a little bit sick of Feist. Everytime we went to anybody’s house for a shindig, “Let It Die” was playing over the speakers. “Mushaboom” was getting killed on mainstream radio, and her music just seemed to follow me around everywhere I went. However, listening to “The Reminder” has made me fall in love all over again. First of all, it almost goes without saying, that she may just have the most unique female voice in indie-rock at the moment (OK, OK, at least until Neko Case releases another one.) The album opens with the breathtaking “I’m Sorry”, which basically takes off from where “Let It Die” ended. It has an acoustic French-pop style to it, designed to immediately calm the savage beast that the work week may have turned us into. The second cut has Feist rocking out ever-so-slightly with “I Feel It All,” a jumpy little number, complete with chimes and harmonies. “The Park” is especially for those who still are not sold on her amazing voice. If the vocals towards the end of this song doesn’t induce chills, than, in the words of Harrison Ford, you may just be the world’s only living heart donor. “Intuition” is another very moving number that has surfaced on a bootleg or two in the past already, but is finally here in its completed version. And “1,2,3,4” just proves again that Feist’s remarkable abilities as a singer, songwriter, tunesmith, etc obviously comes naturally to her. Everything she does seems effortless, and if that’s the case, in the next few years she will no doubt be considered a Canadian music legend.

Feist is playing two sold-out nights at Massey Hall in Toronto on May 25^th and 26^th.

Download:
The Park mp3

Watch the outstanding video for “1,2,3,4” here.
Feist on myspace.
Purchase “The Reminder” on Insound.com.