Date: 1971
Release: Virgin #40641
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“For Francoise Hardy, at the Seine’s edge…”

–Bob Dylan, Another Side Of Bob Dylan

Unlike escargots, beautiful French women are not an acquired taste, especially when they can sing. A melancholy and sensual chanteuse, Francoise Hardy made a name for herself crafting lush love songs of great sophistication. Often characterized as aloof, the quietly self-possessed Hardy never allowed herself to be marketed on her abundant sex appeal. Disregarding her looks, she built a following strictly on the strength of her singing and songwriting talents. Although released in 1971, La Question endures as her most spare and seductive album. “Viens” opens the record with a dramatic flair designed to grab the listener’s attention. The title track follows, establishing the album’s elegant dreamlike mood. On such songs as “Chanson D’O,” “Mer,” and “Doigts,” Francoise’s breathy voice lulls you deeper into a deliciously languid state.

The mysterious Tuca (aka Valeniza Zagni da Silva) accompanies Hardy on acoustic guitar, co-arranging and co-writing most of the songs. Although largely unknown, Tuca was a talented musician who released two obscure albums in her native Brazil, Tuca and Dracula, I Love You, both of which remain impossible to find. Tuca’s chararacteristically delicate and uncluttered arrangements help define La Question, with her subtle touches of bass and strings beautifully accentuating Francoise’s sultry vocals. In several places, Hardy substitutes melodic humming in place of singing, wordlessly articulating the emotional essence of the song. “Bati Mon Nid” features a particularly catchy chorus of “la-la-la-la-la’s,” and the record ends with another refrain of “la-la-la” on “Reve.” A timelessly romantic album overflowing with after-hours ambience, this is the perfect disc to put on when snuggling close to the one you love.

Date: February 15, 2005 (release)
Release: Nettwerk #30414
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Aside from the occasional Air song, I don’t consider contemporary French music worth the effort. You can spend unreasonable amounts of time wading through stacks of mindless hip-hop or slick and unsoulful pop in order to find the very few hidden gems of the French music scene. That said, you can imagine my surprise at uncovering such talents as Benjamin Biolay, Keren Ann, Carla Bruni and Coralie Clément all within the space of a year.

The last mademoiselle remains my true favorite of the bunch.  Fans and detractors alike cite her whispery voice that can give instant mood to whatever song she sings as the key to her sound.  The sexy then twenty-one-year-old first used it to near perfection in “Salle des Pas Perdus”, a jazzy, bossa nova inflected album of sweet, wistful songs that make for perfect listening as you sip your Friday evening apéro.

But 2005′s Bye Bye Beauté really opened my eyes to Clément’s talents. To be fair, she has some serious help: her brother is Benjamin Biolay, a multi-talented musician and collaborator with Keren Ann. (Not a simple case of nepotism, Clément never intended to join the family business—Benjamin “discovered” her after word got back to him that sis sounded pretty good when singing his songs for fun.) Quite literally, and distinct from her debut, the new album rocks. From the first track, “L’Indécise” (“The Indecisive Woman”), to the last, Clément uses her signature voice to complement her brother’s imaginative arrangements.

The album’s vibe comes partly from Clément’s frequent sojourns to New York City, where a friendship with Daniel Lorca of Nada Surf helped expand her horizons.  The result of all this study abroad and sibling synergy is a study in contrasts. Out of this Paris-New York synthesis comes a variety of aggressive, winsome and frank songs that sound like the Velvet Underground cut with a strong dash of vintage Serge Gainsbourg and Françoise Hardy. Favorite tracks include “Un beau jour pour mourir” (A Good Day to Die), “L’Enfer” (hell) and “Ta révérence.”

“L’Enfer” speaks to an ex, asking (here goes my translation) “what did it do to you to let me fall/ don’t you know that once you hit bottom you can still dig after all?  You want more/you get less/ voilà all that’s left.”  The refrain is the ultimate kiss-off: “fortunately hell doesn’t exist.” Of course, this all sounds better in French, but you get the idea. Clément has come a long way from the secret crushes she sang about on her first record. Check out the impressive chanteuse she’s grown into.

Date: 1975
Release: A&M/Horizon #0809
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“In France, and maybe the rest of the world, I am not considered like a real hip-hop DJ–and I don’t want to be considered a real hip-hop DJ, because I love so many different styles of music. My way of working came from the hip-hop, but I try to expand it.”

– DJ Cam

The number of people who ought to concern themselves with the musical innovations of DJ Cam runs into the millions. A former Parisian graffiti artist, Laurent Daumail (aka DJ Cam) has released several undeniably hip-hop records that radically rewrite the rules of the genre. Neglected in his native France, audiences in the US, UK, and Japan have embraced his envelope pushing style of downbeat hip-hop, helping to amplify the global impact of such kindred artists as DJ Shadow and DJ Krush.

An avowed enemy of the synthesizer, DJ Cam crafts his complex music with the barest of tools: a couple turntables, a sampler, and a mixer. Far removed from any hip-hop on the charts, his laid-back sound seamlessly blends obscure and familiar basement samples with thick bass lines, tricked-up scratching, and imaginative breaks.

While steeped in the classic hip-hop sounds of the mid-80s (think Public Enemy), DJ Cam‘s sprawling style encompasses a range of musical influences that goes far beyond his core hip-hop roots. His greatest talent lies in his ability to fuse hip-hop with such diverse genres as jazz, jungle, dub, funk, and orchestral scores–and to do so often within a single song.

Although always mixing many influences into his musical palette, it is heavy strains of old-school jazz that define the instrumentals found on DJ Cam‘s 1996 release, Substances. Previously unreleased in America, this fantastically mellow record plunders the jazz vaults for stirring samples from such artists as John Coltrane, McCoy Tyner, Pharoah Sanders, Don Cherry and others. An engrossing and often beautiful set of songs, Substances is, as Cam explains, “an ambient album, something for the home.”

The album opens with a brief but punchy hip-hop intro–a pledge of allegiance of sorts–explicitly framing the musical explorations that follow in a hip-hop context. Turntable scratching opens the next track, “Friends And Enemies,” before gently giving way to Coltrane riffs, pitched down beats, eerie strings, and spoken words by Malcolm X. After a brief jazz-sampled interlude entitled “Essences,” the mood heads East on “Meera,” a hypnotic song where arabic rhythms and atmospheric drone instruments are bent and twisted around the spiritual voicings of Kakoli Sengupta. The obscure avant funk groove of Don Cherry’s Brown Rice finds a new home as the core sample in “Sound System Children,” an up front track with plenty of drive, while the opening theme to the film “Interview With the Vampire” is extracted to form the basis of the album’s most epic downtempo track, “Twilight Zone.” “Outro” closes out the record with a book-end slice of abstract hip-hop.

A lush journey into an alternate universe of hip-hop, Substances is a groundbreaking record that reveals the infinite possibilities in music. Like all musical innovators, DJ Cam‘s strikingly individual brand of music fails to fit inside any rigid definitions, and he just might have to wait for the unknowing millions to catch on.

Date: August 21, 1999
Release: 1999 Astralwerks 6264
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For years, obsessed fans and collectors clamored for a domestic re-issue of French-duo Air‘s five-track EP, Premiers Symptomes. In 1999 they got more than they had bargained for. While the original European release pulled together five early Air singles of dreamy consistency, the US release mindlessly tacked on two funky "bonus" tracks that many believe clashed with the original vibe. To settle the controversy, I recommend programming your disc player for only the first five tracks. That way you may better experience Nicolas Godin’s and Jean-Benoit Dunckel’s lullingly tranquil soundscapes without the jarring wake up call of newcomer closing tracks "Californie" and "Brakes On."

Blending the vintage sounds of the Fender Rhodes, Minimoog, and Clavinet, these five separately released singles hang together with a delicious album-like cohesiveness, creating a soul-soothing atmosphere that you will crave at the end of the day. These five singles represent some of the most gorgeously grooving electronica pop in the entire Air discography, clearly holding their own next to anything on the duo’s gem-filled full-length debut, 1998′s Moon Safari.

The music of Air offers a blissful escape from our modern day blues, helping us breathe a bit easier, if only for the duration of a few brilliant tracks.

Date: March 24, 1971 (release)
Release: Polygram International #548429
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“Ugliness has more going for it than beauty. It endures.”

Serge Gainsbourg

“The man who looked like a louche turtle cross-bred with a dissipated, chain-smoking wolf was also a singer, songwriter, actor, painter, cutting-edge composer, Eurovision Song Contest winner, novelist, screnwriter, film director, provocateur, sentimentalist, populist, intellectual, and the single most important person in the history of French pop music.”

Sylvie Simmons, Mojo Magazine

I wish I could speak better French, so that I might fully understand the words on Histoire de Melody Nelson. According to my trusted French friends, Gainsbourg’s lyrics are pure poetry, bestowing a level of brilliance to his music that I literally can’t comprehend. But that hasn’t deterred me. Familiar only with the bare facts of Melody Nelson‘s darkly sensual story, my imagination performs a miraculous feat of translation, in which I feel the hidden meaning behind Serge’s songs, losing myself in his impenetrable lyrics like a voyeur in a foreign land. I listen on, unsure of what I’m hearing, but titillated nonetheless by all the obvious decadence.

French or otherwise, you don’t have to speak the language to experience Melody Nelson‘s incredibly great music, but a little backstory certainly helps. Taken together, the seven songs on the album form a lurid tale of obsessive love told with extraordinary intelligence and humor, making it the musical equivalent of Nabakov’s novel, Lolita. The album is about a lecherous, middle-aged, Rolls-Royce driving Frenchman (Serge, of course) who runs into a virginal teenage cyclist-vixen (played by his young and beautiful British-actor wife, Jane Birkin, who sings on the album and appears on its cover seductively clutching a rag doll against her bare breasts —hello dolly!). Serge the hunter stalks his prey, and with seduction comes love, which is consummated at “L’Hotel Particulier” (and for us all to hear on “En Melody”). The affair ends in rock-opera tragedy, with the flighty Melody killed in a plane crash, leaving behind a shattered wreck of a man to tell us his harrowing tale on “Cargo Culte.” These scintillating details should provide enough grist to set any good Anglo-Saxon imagination grinding. What language barrier?

Story aside, the music on Melody Nelson is way ahead of its time—an experimental blending of spoken-word vocals, lushly epic pop strings, soaring choir voices, funk-flavored rock grooves and loud guitar. According to Beck, the album is “one of the greatest marriages of rock band and orchestra…It’s very cool and its dynamic is genius—there’s this band that’s completely rocking on this almost acid tangent, but they’re buried in the mix with him (Gainsbourg) whispering on top, and he’s the loudest thing on it.”

A perfectly realized concept album, a sonically inventive poem of perversion, Melody Nelson was hailed by few critics of its time, failing to become a hit, even in France. Today we can better appreciate its magnitude, with disciples like Air and David Holmes successfully slipping the Serge sound into the musical mainstream.

Histoire de Melody Nelson stands as one of the shortest essential albums in rock history (my only complaint, if you can call it that), with a total running time of 27:06. Still I warn you: spend a good half-hour with it, and you might soon start wanting French lessons.