Sickly-sweet vocals relentlessly tiptoe towards death by chocolate. But...
Published: Tuesday, July 12, 2011
French pop starlet Marina Celeste is onto her third studio album following on limited success with Acidulé and Cinéma Enchanté. So here’s presenting The Angel Pop.
The breathy chanteuse has recorded tracks with new wave French collective Nouvelle Vague, including her team effort on the GoGo’s Our Lips Are Sealed with Terry Hall of The Specials; a relationship that is prevalent on the new album with Hall backing her up on three tracks.
Onto the album, and sacré bleu it’s fucking long.
Each of the 16 tracks has a glimmer of intelligence to stop the listener smashing the Stop button, but her compulsion to chew through genres as though munching midget gems has the potential to grate. She flits through folk; electro; blues; backing band groove, and winds up with, musically, what is a disparate and rather incoherent album.
Jumping from French to English, the only sniff of the glue emanating from this hotchpotch is the dark and vulnerable undertone of the piece – that’s 16 tracks – from which she stays true and loyal melodically and vocally.
Even in rubber stamping bizarre sci-fi droidnoises – and the production on this is clinical – she maintains a throughline of fear and vulnerability cemented with dangerous harmonies,while transcendent key changes remind us it’s an album, not a compilation.
Comparing her solo sound to alma mater Nouvelle Vague seems lazy but that’s not to sell it short. Lyrically and melodically we’re in the same ballpark, but there’s a purgatory about this album. While the often sickly-sweet tinkle of vocals relentlessly tiptoe towards death by chocolate, she spins around with dynamic fortitude and draws blood.
Here’s where the album’s real pleasure is, L’appartment, DADADA and opener Beds are Burning pin this down. Sans vocal the album is dynamic, twisted, and flicks sweet then sour sauce at the listener’s taste buds to their point of reflux.
But that binding vulnerability, nonchalant lissome vocals and traversing dissonance means it just about interests rather than irritates.
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