Nouvelle Vague [Import]

Nouvelle Vague | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (August 3, 2004)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Label: Peacefrog
• ASIN: B00018D3JQ
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Vinyl
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #194,725 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Love Will Tear Us Apart

2. I Just Cant Get Enough

3. In A Manner of Speaking

4. Guns of Brixton

5. (This Is Not) A Love Song

6. Too Drunk to Fuck

7. Marianne

8. Making Plans for Nigel

9. A Forest

10. Psyche

11. Teenage Kicks

12. I Melt With You

13. Friday Night, Saturday Morning

Editorial Reviews

Nouvelle Vague is a French electronica project initialized by multi-instrumentalists and producers Marc Collin and Olivier Libaux.

Marc first came to recognition with his band Ollano, known for their Francophone trip-hop / jazz-fusion and his movie soundtracks such as "the kidnapper's theme". He soon moved into the realm of club music, initially recording for the UK’s own Paper Recordings and progressing into a more creative and eclectic producer under the guises Avril on FCom, and Volga Select on Output Records.

Olivier Libaux has been involved with many French pop acts during the nineties and started working with Marc in 1998.

Nouvelle Vague which translates to "new wave" in English, and bossa nova in Portuguese, revisits a number of both Marc and Olivier's favorite tracks from the early eighties, taking in bands such as The Clash, Joy Division, and the Cure in a stunning combination of bossa nova, jazz and sixties pop.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Deconstruction of 80s Punk and New Wave Classics, January 17, 2005

By 

Taras R. Hnatyshyn (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Nouvelle Vague (Audio CD)

Nouvelle Vague (the album) is a French project to mine 80s Punk and New Wave classics, strip these songs to their bare, and suprisingly beautiful, melodies and have a French female voice perform the vocals originaly sung by a male singer. New Wave and Bossa Nova meet in Nouvelle Vague... the words mean the same thing in their respective languages, and now they are merged in the musical world. These covers are not for everybody, but the songs grow on you with repeated listening. A great chill out choice for those who grew up with the melodies. Endless queries of Who's that? will follow.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars It shouldn't work, but it does, March 24, 2005

By 

Mr. L. Kelly "[e-mail]" (London) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Nouvelle Vague (Audio CD)

On paper, I thought this record would encapsulate everything I hate about some contemporary music, with its tendency towards glib pastiche, gutless irony and clueless appropriation. So it's with not a little surprise that I'm forced to report back..... this works! And I speak as someone who knows and loves the originals. Reinterpreting these classics from a feminine and non-british perspective brings out interesting new aspects of the tunes and foregrounds their melodic strength and lyrical sensitivity. Some skate onto the thin ice of novelty - in fact, I usually miss the first few (pretty lame) tunes out and play the disc from "Guns Of Brixton" onwards, but that doesn't mean the record overall is without merit. Some are really affecting - "Making Plans For Nigel" has a real pathos, "Marian" and "In a Manner of Speaking" are wonderful, and (my personal favourite) "Psyche" takes the anger and hysteria of the original and reworks it into a version that drips with controlled menace. Personally, I think the whole bossa tag puts a kitsch/ironic spin on expectations of this project that's unjustified. Ignore the carpings of purist punk dullards and the sniggerings of cloth-eared hipsters - give this baby a spin with an open mind and you'll be in for an interesting and enjoyable ride..

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Murdering songs in the nicest possible way, September 3, 2004

By 

kardra (Dublin, Ireland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nouvelle Vague (Audio CD)

This is one album the merits of which you could defend or denounce with equal conviction. Depending on your current mood or tolerance level, this collection of songs can be read as bland, people-will-buy-anything cynical, even sacrilegious (for those who take their nostalgia seriously) or as an aural delight, gathering together what seem like some of the most gorgeous female pop vocals around. I for one like it for the light, poppy feel it has to it, which makes you want to stick it on first thing on a summer morning. The guest vocalists' voices are pretty interchangeable, and it was only after reading the sleeve notes that I realized the producers actually worked with different singers. So much for my musical ear, then. The idea behind the album was evidently to be cleverly subversive by taking morose pop songs ('angsty' is the word used in the liner notes, I think) and sugar-coating them. It didn't always work for me: by the time I got to the XTC cover "Making Plans for Nigel", I lost my patience a bit with the weary vocals and contrived drawls, and had to get out and listen to the biting, highly political original. One of my favourite songs on the CD is the feather-light "In a Manner of Speaking", of which I have never actually heard the original. I'd give the album marks for its vocal prettiness and some productional twists, but it exists too much in a vacuum to really go down as a classic of the bossa nova genre.