Continuing in our grand tradition of covering not nearly enough French pop…
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[6.56]
Alfred Soto: A dash of late nineties pitch-altering and manipulation of space, a tablespoon of Arthur Baker electrosoul, topped with affectless vocal. It starts and ends with this.
[7]
Scott Mildenhall: Les animaux pensent dans le Safari Disco Club, and decide that this tale of a relationship going only one way should, well, go only one way, and quite slowly at that. It’s on a treadmill set to the lowest speed, trudging along without a destination, an album track without context. Still, there’s time for Tepr to reswizzle it like he did “Ce Jeu,” so all is not lost.
[6]
Crystal Leww: It’s interesting to hear Yelle move into some of the slower, more minimal production that seems to be trendy right now. I’m really enjoying the way her voice sounds on top of the different drum patterns on top of different synth combinations. The English vocal loop in the background sums it up nicely: “I don’t know what you mean, but it means a lot to me”.
[6]
Will Adams: The title promises frills and sentimentality, perhaps something like “Que Veux-Tu.” But then the opening blindsides you with a love that isn’t perfect, but confused: “I don’t know what you mean, but it means a lot to me.” That line is romantic but mostly detached, and Yelle’s Auto-Tuned glaze adds to the indifference. “I’m nothing but a formality,” she sings, defeated. There is so little force behind the delivery, which makes it all the more powerful.
[8]
Katherine St Asaph: Title suggests a Maria Popova-via-Felix Salmon approach, so: I love you, sequencers! I love you, synth cowbell! I think I love you, trap takeoffs in unexpected places! I know I love you, reluctantly settling love stories!
[8]
Iain Mew: The gruff spoken sample makes me wonder if Yelle has been listening to “110%”. It’s not set off against tranquility in quite the same way, because “L’Amour Parfait” has got buzzy bass and an electro-scrunch thing going on too, but when the chorus opens up it does so with Yelle floating in space, time slowing at her command.
[8]
Brad Shoup: Shades of Jessie Ware, right? Only here it’s dread on dread, and the sample does it a mite better.
[6]
Anthony Easton: There is something charming with the girlish chanson working at oblique angles to the gruff, modulated voices. The formal choices, and the differences in language, function as a way of talking about the failure of communication, which is a semi-interesting way of working around talking about love, or at least eros.
[4]
Jer Fairall: The monotonous groans of the synths are pure Liquid Sky new wave, matched in their disquiet by a mechanical English-language vocal refrain that is creepily sinister no matter how charitable its attempted sentiment. But why is it that the thing that should sound the most foreign to my ears, the en français lead vocal, feels the most conventional? I suspect it has much to do with how warm the vocalist manages to sound despite her flat, evasive tone, introducing a not-entirely-welcome element of the human into something that should sound so seductively, if menacingly, alien.
[6]