A review of the album 'High Violet' by The National

Review Snapshot: High Violet is the fifth album from the National and the group's most eagerly anticipated record yet. This time around the Brooklyn based band have the added burdens of worldwide exposure and greater critical scrutiny to deal with, though it appears that such pressures have either been openly embraced or actively ignored, such is the confidence with which this record is approached and realised. The result, a poignant exploration of 21st century anxieties, carefully crafted and delivered with an admirable sincerity.

The Cluas Verdict? 9 out of 10

Full Article: Few bands it seems take the long road to success anymore. What with the information super highway and the like, an outrageous hairstyle, an investment in treadmills, or even a spirited Paul Weller impression (yes, that’s a swipe at The Enemy), might just get you where you want to be. The National however, adopt a more old-fashioned approach to making music. Their incremental ascension to indie-rock stardom has been the product of hard work, strong albums and touring the arses off themselves. After Boxer (2007), the group have made their way to the precarious summit of alternative music. Those who may have feared how Berninger and co. would handle such dizzying heights need not have bothered.

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In the ever impressive line-up of bands coming over to perform in Dublin the most recent additions are Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett’s Gorillaz who’ll be playing their first ever Irish show (finally!) in the 02 on the 22nd of September, and hotly-tipped Mancunian electro duo Hurts will be playing in Whelan’s on the 20th of May. While I’m sure they’ll get the obligatory comparisons between themselves and Joy Division, chiefly due to the fact that they are from Manchester and are musicians with a fondness for synthesisers, their music isn’t quite that easy to read which makes it all the more interesting.

Lately I’ve been search through my CD collection to find some hidden treasures that I’d forgotten about in the intervening years since I bought them, and started listening to PJ Harvey’s ‘Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea’ again. Very rarely can anyone make what appears to be quite vicious and intimidating singing sound equally as endearing as it is confusing.

After listening to the album and reminiscing I decided to look up what she’s doing now, and found a recent video of her performing her new song on The Andrew Marr Show. While I’m not too sure about the song, I was oddly pleased about the fact that Gordon Brown was watching from one of the monitors. I wonder what he thought? The song is called ‘Let England Shake’.

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Back in 2007 we introduced you to Tender Forever, a Bordeaux electro act based in Oregon, USA.

As you might recall, Tender Forever is not a group but the nom de pop of Mélanie Valéra (right) - yes, a mere 'de' short of sharing her name with the dominant public figure of 20th century Ireland. (Our non-Irish readers will know Éamon de Valera as the baddie in the film 'Michael Collins'.)

The PR opportunities in Ireland would have been wonderful - an electronica version of 'Amhrán na bhFiann' to close the next Fianna Fáil Árd-Fheis; a residency at Áras an Uachtaráin; a photo op where she symbolically defends a packet of Boland's cream crackers against an English stag party. (As she's now domicile in the States, her American connection would grant her immunity.) And she's tall, skinny and dark-haired - are we sure they're not related?

Alas, Mélanie Valéra will have to rely on her music to make an impact in Ireland. Fortunately, her music is good. 'No Snare' is the third Tender Forever album: another likeable collection of idiosyncratic alt-folk-flavoured electronica.

The title may suggest an animal trap but is actually inspired by an absent drum sound, according to the Tender Forever MySpace page:

NO SNARE is less a rejection of things that have been, as it a reconfiguration. Take away the snare and there isn't a loss, just a new song. As we pass through the flood of moments that is our lives we make a constant stream of decisions as to what to hold on to and what to let go of.  But it is always our life, even as it changes radically.

Valéra's lyrics tend to be as heartfelt, contemplative and personal as that teenage-poetry blurb suggests. And her pick n' mix of pounding rhythms creates a sense of emotional urgency, which gives her songs a human warmth not always evident in electronic music.

Check out les chansons de Valéra at her MySpace page. Here's our favourite of her new songs, what has all the comely maidens dancing at the crossroads -  the excellent 'Like The Snare That's Gone':

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One of France's bona fide pop legends has just released a new album. 'La Pluie Sans Parapluie' (in English, "the rain without an umbrella") is the twenty-sixth studio album by Françoise Hardy.

You might recognise the name from her 1994 collaboration with Blur on 'La Comédie', a reworking of 'To The End'. However, like with Serge Gainsbourg (of whom more later), there's a lot more to Hardy than a sole Franco-English duet known in the U.K. (For one thing, she had a UK Top 20 hit in 1965 with 'All Over The World'.)

First, though, some vital Françoise Hardy trivia for your next pub quiz:

• Her husband is Jacques Dutronc, a fellow '60s French icon featured in our preview of Les Vieilles Charrues - and their son is Thomas Dutronc, whose pleasant mix of jazz manouche and chanson française was tipped/jinxed by this blog in the race for the 2008 Prix Constantin.
• Despite being Parisian, she represented Monaco in the 1963 Eurovision Song Contest and finished fifth.
• Irish drizzle-pop dandy Perry Blake has collaborated with her.
• She has published books on astrology.

Factoids aside, we reckon Hardy was one of the first female singers to become successful with her own compositions - her 1962 debut single 'Tous Les Garçons Et Les Filles' sold half a million copies. Her early style was somewhere between US folk and French chanson, often played simply on an acoustic guitar or piano.

Rare for a pre-electronica French act, Hardy made a concerted effort at success in the UK - she released three albums of songs in English, mostly containing translations of her original French songs. The third of these albums, 'If You Listen' from 1971, captures the late-'60s-early-'70s pastoral-folk-pop vibe: it's quite good. (You can picture students of that time listening to it in their bedsits.)

As for her best ever song, you might know it as a cover version. 'Comment Te Dire Adieu' was a 1990 hi-NRG disco hit for Jimmy Somerville and June Miles Kingston. Hardy's version was a French chart success in 1969 - and was itself a cover version.

Before 'Comment Te Dire Adieu' there was 'It Hurts To Say Goodbye' - a typically maudlin and manipulative slushfest by Vera Lynn. Apparently, Hardy heard an instrumental version, liked the melody and asked for some French lyrics from none other than Serge Gainsbourg. Words done en français, Serge then decided to sort out the music.

Even by the dizzyingly high standards of Gainsbourg's work at that time, 'Comment Te Dire Adieu' is magnificent. Like all great pop songs, its apparent simplicity hides a satisfying depth and complexity. The original's slushy melodrama is replaced by clipped arrangements that have an edgy sang-froid; listen just before the first verse for the pedal cymbal that hisses like a cobra. Serge's trademark symphonic strings infuse the song with glamour and a slight hint of feeling - but only a slight hint. Hardy remains impeccably poised and aloof throughout - even her spoken-word middle section is delivered matter-of-factly, like a dispassionate voiceover. (Compare it to the except of dialogue from Charlotte Gainsbourg used as the intro to Madonna's 'What It Feels Like For A Girl'.)

Just as remarkable as Gainsbourg's arrangements were his new lyrics. Already known as a provocateur, and with pop's most notorious single soon to follow, Serge had the ingenious idea of making nearly all the lines rhyme with '-ex'. As the '-ex' rhymes become more imaginative, the song progresses towards a seemingly inevitable encounter with the most taboo '-ex' word of all. (Even today, how many mainstream English-language pop songs feature the word 'sex'? Not the meaningless 'sexy' but the blunt 'sex'?) What's more, in French 'sexe' is the word for the reproductive organ. One can imagine the listener (and the censor) of the time wondering where this song would go.

(Had this song been released in the UK, it would have been banned by the BBC for an unacceptable '-ex' word: a piece of product placement in the third and final verse.)

'Adieu' is something of a definitive 'goodbye forever', where 'au revoir' means 'until we see each other again'. In English, of course, we can use 'goodbye' to mean both 'adieu' and 'au revoir'. Here in glorious colour is the ultra-cool Françoise Hardy of 1969 with 'Comment Te Dire Adieu'. Goodbye:

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