J'Ecoute De Musique Saoule [Import]

Francoise Hardy | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (January 15, 2001)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Label: Odeon France
• ASIN: B00004UZOY
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #458,045 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The great French chanteuse extending her range, June 20, 2004

By 

Rodney Gavin Bullock (Winchester, Hampshire Angleterre) - See all my reviews

This review is from: J'Ecoute De Musique Saoule (Audio CD)

Reviewer: Gavin Bullock from Winchester, Hampshire United Kingdom
Françoise Hardy is one the the Beatles' generation and was quite popular in the UK in the 1960s. She wrote most of her songs and accompanied herself on the acoustic guitar. Although influenced by the rock music of the time, many songs revealed a real melodic gift which made them uniquely hers. The best, 'Voila' for example, could be emotionally shattering and dig right into the rawest nerves of lost or unrequited love. Her voice, although not big and with a somewhat limited range, is outstandingly beautiful. She has fallen out of sight in the English-speaking world and it is very much our loss. She is a superlative musician.
She now rejects the early songs to some extent and in the 1970s started moving to a more 'sophisticated' style. 'Message Personnel', another song of almost unbearable sadness, shows her emotions moving with her years. However, these tear-jerkers were to become less common, to be replaced by highly rhythmic songs, some with a comic element. Her latest album, Le Danger (2000), marked a trend back to her darker side.
The album here is exactly the same in content as a Pathé-Marconi-EMI vinyl LP released in 1978. Only one of the songs, 'Perdu d'avance', is Hardy's own. 'Brouillard dans la rue Corvisart' is a duet with her husband, Jaques Dutronc. 'J'écoute de la musique saoûle' is a very rhythmic foot-tapper. 'Hallucinogène', by contrast, is sleepy. 'Occupe' is a fine song about a woman whose lover's phone is always engaged. The duet with Dutronc is pleasant, if a little bland. 'Tu m'vois tu m'sens plus' has a slightly menacing air in parts, a feeling enhanced by the strange orchestration at the beginning of each verse. 'Nous deux nous deux et rien d'autre' is gentle and is a typical Hardy song, even though she did not write it. Gabriel Yared is a fine arranger and his delicious orchestration, including a rather unconventional use of the accordion, adds a lot to the piece. A great song. 'Swing au pressing' (Swing to the dry-cleaner's)is rhythmic and funny. Next is Françoise's own song, 'Perdu d'avance' and is a gentle piece but not one of her best. 'Tip Tap t'entends mes pas' is another rhythmic one, as you might imagine from the title. 'Si je le retrouve un jour (If I find him again on day)' returns to the lost love theme. The final track, 'Beau Boeing Belle Caravelle' concerns the two airliners, American and French, set to Latin American rhythms - an inventive and fun ending.
It is not her best album, mainly because she is singing other people's songs. But is it has some gems and I would highly recommend it.

5.0 out of 5 stars Vintage Francoise - despite the date, September 24, 2011

By 

Lloyd J. Peasley (Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: J'Ecoute De Musique Saoule (Audio CD)

It's generally thought that Francoise Hardy's late-70s albums are dispensable bits of flimflam compared with her 60s output. This only goes to show that what is generally thought to be so is not always correct. The three albums she recorded between 1977-9, "Star", "J'Ecoute De La Musique Saoule", and "Gin Tonic", are in the same league as anything she ever recorded. The thing is that the Francoise on display in these albums is, in every aesthetic respect, the very same Francoise as on "Mon Amie La Rose" or "Comme" or any of the glorious recordings she'd made a decade or more earlier. If anything she's more assured both technically and emotionally: of course, assurance may not be quite the thing Francoise's fans are looking for but even if you discount this as an advance not worth having her singing continued to have all the purity, otherwordliness, and complete absence of affectation that it'd always had. The settings may be different - after all, it'd be impossible to put 1964-style arrangements on a late 70's album except as pastiches - but the moods evoked are the same. These are right in "je ne sais quoi" territory; none of the regulation terms used to describe her music quite ring true - "melancholy", "sad", no, neither of these capture the direct experience of listening to her sing and one is forced to come up with paradoxical phrases to try to pin her appeal down -"elusive but direct", pretentious things like that. Almost every singer projects a persona through which they sing the songs: with female singers it may be a "waif", a "vamp", a "kitten", a "Big Momma" or any number of others, but with Francoise - almost uniquely in my experience - there doesn't seem to be anything contrived and artificial at all. There is only her and her singing.

But what about the album? The songs are mostly very good indeed, with extended and unusually wide-ranging melodies (often 16 bars or more long). Perhaps they're not as immediately memorable as some of her 60s stuff but I guarantee several of them will stick in your memory after a few plays. Most of the songs are in the reflective ballad mode, which is generally her forte, but there are a few uptempo numbers like the title track, which is a dance number with yowling soul backing singers and a dour groove, and the closing number, "Beau Boeing Belle Caravelle", an exuberantly syncopated cha cha-style tune. There is one dud pop-rock song, "Swing Au Pressing", but the rest of the album is sweet, haunting, fresh, imaginative, and just plain gorgeous. AND beautifully sung - just sample the way Francoise phrases the sensuous groove of "Tip Tap T'Entends Mes Pas". She couldn't have done this back in '64. And that's what I mean by "assured".