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Research from France has found that the louder the music in a bar, the more you will drink.

The claim is made by Nicolas Gueguen, professor of behavioural science at the University of Bretagne-Sud in Brittany, in a paper entitled “Sound Level of Environmental Music and Drinking Behaviour: A Field Experiment with Beer Drinkers” which has been published in the journal “Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research”.

For the purposes of consistency, the standard drink was a 25 cl. glass of draught beer (i.e. a half pint, the normal unit of beer consumption in France). Another criterium was the music being played: only current chart hits.

 

At random, and with the permission of the bar owners, the research team changed the sound levels between either 72 decibels, considered normal, or 88 decibels, considered loud. Each time, the researchers would observe one subject’s drinking patterns. After the observed subject left the bar, sound levels were again randomly selected and a new subject was chosen.

The results showed a link between loud music and the tendency of bar patrons to drink more and faster. At the normal decibel level, customers had an average of 2.6 drinks and took 14.5 minutes to finish each drink. However, when the music was loud, customers ordered an average of 3.4 drinks and took less than 11.5 minutes to finish each one.

Guéguen has two possible explanations for his team’s findings. "One, in agreement with previous research on music, food and drink, high sound levels may have caused higher arousal, which led the subjects to drink faster and to order more drinks," he says.

"Two, loud music may have had a negative effect on social interaction in the bar, so that patrons drank more because they talked less."

In other words, loud music gets you excited but stops you having a conversation, so you channel your energy into drinking. The results are consistent with findings of psychological manipulation in advertising and supermarket environments.

However, Professor Gueguen makes a more serious point. Over 70,000 a year die in France because of chronic alcohol consumption, and drinking is linked the majority of fatal car accidents. "We have shown that environmental music played in a bar is associated with an increase in drinking," he said. "We need to encourage bar owners to play music at more of a moderate level, and make consumers aware that loud music can influence their alcohol consumption."

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Back in the summer of 2006, when this blog was still an old-fashioned monthly column, we predicted world domination for Versailles band Phoenix (below right). They had just released their splendid third album, "It's Never Been Like That", and looked set to capitalise on the exposure they received from featuring on the soundtrack to Sofia Coppola's "Lost In Translation".

And as singer Thomas Mars was going out with Coppola, there was a celebrity-gossip angle that was surely good for gaining mainstream attention.

Well, despite our enthusiasm and some glowing reviews in the UK and US music press, the album didn't break the charts. Still, Phoenix have built up a solid international fanbase from years of constant touring.

Time for some useful information:

Trivia (1): Phoenix formed to play as a session band for a remix of Air's "Kelly Watch The Stars".

Trivia (2): It was Mars, under the pseudonym of Gordon Tracks, who sang the vocals on Air's "Playground Love" from Coppola's screen adaptation of "The Virgin Suicides".

Trivia (3): Guitarist Laurent Brancowitz played with Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christos in a band called Darlin'. On their 1992 UK tour the band were dismissed by Melody Maker as "a bunch of daft punk". Wonder what ever happened to the other two lads?

Phoenix are currently in New York recording their as-yet-untitled fourth album, due for release in November. Before that, we can get a taster of what the new album will sound like. The band have contributed a new track to a promotional campaign for jewellers Cartier.

"Twenty-One One Zero" is quite different to the classic indie-popness of their last album. Opening with a Kraftwerk-esque loop, the track brings in an Eno-style ambient synth treatment, some pounding drums and a squally guitar. It all builds to an arena-friendly burst of energy.

Sound familiar? Well, we reckon it shares a lot with U2's "Where The Streets Have No Name". Are Phoenix planning to go all stadium-rock and turn a few dollars Stateside? Let's hope "Twenty-One One Zero", while diverting in its way, is just work in progress and they have some killer tunes in the bag.

You can check out the full five minutes-plus of "Twenty-One One Zero" on the special Cartier MySpace. As a preview, here's the first three minutes - and they don't even get to the track's two lines of lyrics. Hmmm:

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July 14 may well be the birthday of modern France, but modern French people prefer to celebrate July 12. Ten years ago today, the French football team won the World Cup, beating Brazil 3-0 in the final in Paris.

Even for non-football fans, this date now carries enormous emotional weight. The French side that night was a multicoloured mix of black, white and north African origins - an accurate cross-section of French society. Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the extreme-right Front National, had bemoaned the excess of non-white players in the French squad - completely misjudging the mood of the moment. There were optimistic hopes that the exploits of Zizou and co. would slay the beast of French racism.

This optimism was cruelly shattered in 2002. In that year's presidential election, five million French people voted for Le Pen and put him into the second round run-off against Jacques Chirac. As for les bleus, their World Cup defence was a disaster and they came home from South Korea after the first round.

Tonight at the Stade de France, scene of that famous victory a decade ago, the 1998 squad will play against an international selection managed by Arsène Wenger and Hristo Stoitchkov.

For French people, one piece of music evokes those dizzy heights of le douze juillet. Yes, football fans here get all misty-eyed whenever they hear that old disco classic, "I Will Survive".

Why has a feminist anthem from the 1970s become the theme to France's 1998 World Cup win? Well, anyone who's ever attended a French international rugby match will have heard a brass band in the crowd, playing 'La Marseillaise' and other motivational tunes. During the 1998 World Cup in France, these sports-loving musicians took to playing the trumpet refrain from a 1995 cover of Gloria Gaynor's hit, by the Hermes House Band. The French trumpeteers would throw in a few "Olé!" flourishes and break into a can-can rhythm, all to entertain the crowds.

It caught on, and soon French fans were singing along in "la-la-la" style and repeating that one line all through the night. By the time Didier Deschamps lifted the trophy, that single line embodied the joy and celebration of a nation.

Even today, if you find yourself at a French party or campsite and you wish to break the ice, just start singing the trumpet break to "I Will Survive". Here's the Hermes House Band version that captured the imagination of all France:

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The 2006 follow-up, ‘No Promises’, fared less well. Musical versions of works by some of world literature’s most celebrated poets, including W.B. Yeats and Emily Dickinson, the songs were formulaic rehashes of Bruni’s successful style.

Since then, Bruni has kept a hermit-like low profile, avoiding all publicity and carefully keeping her private affairs out of the media spotlight. We can’t remember hearing her name at all in the last year.

Oh, apart from marrying the President of France.

Bruni (she’s using her own name for her album) insists that most of the tracks on her album were written before she had even met Nicolas Sarkozy. This hasn’t dissuaded the trawl for Sarko-references in her lyrics. For instance: The first single is called ‘L’Amoureuse’! And she’s married! To him! So it’s about him! And so forth.

In truth, there’s nothing on this record that wouldn’t appear on any other romantically-inclined MOR folk-pop album.

By contrast, left-leaning newspaper Libération called the record “bad” and “inaudible” (in the sense that you can’t listen to it, not that you can’t hear it). But Les Inrockuptibles, the politically-engaged culture magazine that regularly runs anti-Sarko covers, gave the album a qualified thumbs-up and noted its debt to the similar-sounding folk-pop of Françoise Hardy. And while the current President of France never got a mention, there was a reference to one of his predecessors, Georges Pompidou. Of course, that could be an ‘Inrocks’ ploy to whip up feeling among its readers. You see? This record was always going to be overwhelmed by its context.

So, when a convoy of motorcycle policemen pulled up to Chateau French Letter with our review copy in a diplomatic pouch and made us sign the Official Secrets Act, your blogger had to try hard to focus on the music. We made our scrunched-up concentrating face and listened. And… we gave a French shrug. It’s light, airy uncontroversial MOR acoustica à la française. There’s more instrumentation (strings, wind, synths) than on her debut, but other than that Bruni is sticking to her formula.

The album will get a worldwide release with the title ‘Simply’. Until then, you can listen to tracks from it on Carla Bruni’s MySpace page, which she no doubt updates every evening at the Elysées Palace. Here’s the video for ‘L’Amoureuse’:

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Slacking off as usual, your Paris correspondent didn’t go to day two of Solidays. Because we live near the festival site, we felt complacent. Two hours of queuing tend to dampen one’s enthusiasm for standing in a field. Speaking of damp, the weather forecast was bad. And the line-up wasn’t much better. The one exception was MC Solaar, who we hear put on a blistering show of his greatest hits.

We were saving ourselves for what, if Sky Sports held the rights to French music festivals, Richard Keys would no doubt have been calling Super Grand Slam Solidays Sunday. Getting up at the crack of noon, we dashed over to Longchamps in fear of another stretch in the queues. As it happened, we strolled through the gate in all of two seconds. And the weather was fantastic. (It was raining in Eire. But then again, isn’t it always?)

In terms of seeing favourite bands, Friday had been a bust. Sunday was different. First up, young Grenoble trio Rhesus. Our regular readers will recall how we have nothing but encouragement for them and any other French band ploughing the lonely furrow of ‘la pop anglaise’. They clearly love ‘Disintegration’ by The Cure for its lovelorn sincerity and charming melodies. While there’s some way to go yet before they hit such dizzy creative heights themselves, they have potential.

Indie cred topped up for the day, your blogger dashed over to another tent for some trashy pop thrills. We have a soft spot for the dayglo disco-pop of Yelle. It’s pure kitsch, but so what? It’s great fun. Yelle herself, only recently discovered on the Internet, performs with the wide-eyed wonder of a normal young girl whose dreams of stardom have just come true. Her energy, colour and cheekiness are hard to resist; her current hit ‘Je Veux Te Voir’ goes “I want to see you/In a pornographic film/to know everything about your anatomy”. How do you follow that?

Well, with Foals, as it happened. We were impressed by their debut album, ‘Antidotes’, and found they shared Vampire Weekend’s cosmopolitan vibes. Alas, their live show feels like a rather tedious jam session. The band members were facing each other instead of the crowd, and what sounded like grooves on record felt like ruts on stage. A pity.

For the indie kids at Solidays, the weekend’s climax was Sunday night’s show by The Gossip. And it was as good as a fireworks display.

Herself (left) was in top form. Dressed in her underwear and wrapped in what looked like a lace curtain from your granny’s bedroom window, Beth Ditto padded barefoot around the stage like a lioness. But all was not well; there were tears in paradise. “I shaved my eyebrows without any water,” she explained, “and now they burn!” She bravely surmounted her suffering and inspired her troops to an intoxicating performance, mixing funk and rock the way teenagers mix cider and lager.

Granny took her drapes back; for the encore Ditto came out in underwear and with a towel wrapped around her head. She sung “Standing In The Way Of Control” from down the front of stage, pressing the flesh with the first row of punters. Set finished, she scaled a speaker stack to soak up the adulation.

Here's Beth Ditto onstage with The Gossip at Solidays in Paris last Sunday night:

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No doubt you queued in the rain from the crack of dawn to buy the new Coldplay album, 'Viva La Vida or Death And All His Friends'. Or maybe you just ignored it.

Either way, perhaps you noticed the album's cover (right), which reproduces a very famous French painting. As you've no doubt shouted at the computer, it's Delacroix's 'Liberty Leading the People', otherwise known as 'Liberty Getting 'Em Out for the Lads'.

The painting, from 1830, commemorates that year's overthrowing of Charles X, king of France under the Bourbon restoration. It depicts an idealised barricade scene from the French Revolution of 1789. (The dapper-looking rebel with top hat and bayonet is believed to be Delacroix himself.)

You can see this painting at the Louvre in Paris. It hangs in a grand hall of oversized French classics just around the corner from the Mona Lisa, probably the most famous painting in the world.

On the same wall as Delacroix's famous barricade scene is another iconic French masterpiece that has been used on an album cover. We're talking about Géricault's 'Raft of the Medusa', which was used by The Pogues for the sleeve of "Rum, Sodomy and the Lash". We hasten to add that the original painting doesn't feature the heads of the band.

While Delacroix's painting is a bit naff to modern viewers (much like Coldplay), Géricault's great work is still immensely powerful in its depiction of human forms twisted in agony.

There's a connection between 'Raft of the Medusa' and our other featured painting. Delacroix was the model for the young man slumped on his legs in the left foreground. (On the album cover, he's just over the word "The" of "The Pogues".)

Both Géricault and Delacroix are buried in the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise, famous as the resting place of Jim Morrison, Edith Piaf and Oscar Wilde.

Have you been to the Louvre? If you've visited Paris as a tourist, perhaps you've dashed through in one afternoon to see the greatest hits: the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo. It takes a full afternoon's brisk walk just to see all the paintings; the sculptures, Egyptology and other artefacts are each another day's work.

Fortunately for those of us who live in Paris, the Louvre is open for free on the first Sunday of every month. So, we can just stroll in and take the great museum one section at a time. The other major galleries of Paris, such as the Musée d'Orsay and the Centre Pompidou, are also free on the first Sunday. We've said it before; life here is good.

From the Louvre-referencing 'Rum, Sodomy And The Lash', here's a very '80s-London video for one of The Pogues' own masterpieces, 'A Pair Of Brown Eyes': 

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