Comme si de rien n'était

by

Carla Bruni

Edit

The beautuful and bold, classy, wistful Italian/French chanteuse has released a new album of love songs, whose title translates "As If Nothing Had Happened", a paean to love and lust.

"Simply" will be the title of the new album for the international market.

Love, loss and relationships are recurring themes, with the odd intellectual interlude, which many of her fans will probably be far more interested in than hearing her recite poetry, however tunefully.

Musically she mines Beatles territory (gently mournful opener "Ma Jeunesse"), an ethereal Julie Cruise style ("La Possibilite D'une Ile"), there's a Bob Dylan cover ("You Belong To Me" sung in English), a bit of flamenco here, Latin rhythms there.

Eight of the album's 11 original songs - there is also a cover of Italian singer/sogwrite Francesco Guccini's "Il Vecchio e il Bambino" in Italian for The old man and the child), and a musical arrangement of a Michel Houellebecq poem - had, it seems, already been written and were well into pre-production before Carla had even been introduced to Nicolas Sarkozy. The album is about love, if not a specific love, and about the passage of time. Those themes, and Bruni's intimate, husky voice, by turns silk and gravel, playful and melancholic, are familiar from her first album, "Quelqu'un M'a Dit", a folksy, me-and-my-guitar production that she recorded pretty much in her kitchen and took almost everyone pleasantly by surprise, selling 1.2m copies in France and a further 800,000 around the world.

Bruni's voice is still there, certainly, but the musical landscape that accompanies it is very different from the sparse acoustic guitar arrangements that served it so well before.

"Comme Si Rien n' Etait" is a riot of horns, flutes, electric pianos, vibraphones, Fenders, even, on occasion, tubas. The songs themselves are, for the most part, simple and moving.

"And the noise of love's pain slowly recedes/ And the sound of the past is silenced," she sings in "L'Amoureuse", a celebration of love, completed, apparently, just after her meeting with Sarkozy.

"The streets are gardens/ I'm dancing on the pavements."

"Tu Es Ma Came" (You Are My Drug) speaks of a fiercer passion and sparked a minor diplomatic incident when Bogotá officials objected to a love described as "more deadly than Afghan heroin/ More dangerous than Colombian white".

"Salut Marin" (Hey Sailor), is a touching lament dedicated to Bruni's brother, Virginio, who died in 2006.

"Ta Tienne" (I'm Yours) coins a phrase new to the French language; the French would normally be, "Je suis à toi". But each verse - "I'm your yours, I'm your yours, no one really says that I know, but it's good anyway" - is supported by a different instrument in turn, one after the other, for no apparent reason.

Nostalgia is at the heart of "Le Temps Perdu", or Lost Time ("I'm offering you the time of cherries and roses, the time of silky caresses/ Make time for the gentle things"), but a song that might have worked magically with the solo guitar of Bruni's earlier albums is tainted by a deliberately nostalgic swing background oozing with clarinets and vibraphones. "Je Suis une Enfant" (I Am a Child) takes a simple Schumann lullaby and, for some reason, converts it into a 60s slow rock number.

On this one she sings that "despite her 40 years and 30 lovers", she still sees herself as a child. "I turn my back on time," she croons... "hair and skirt in the wind".

The French newspaper Le Figaro's critic thought this was the album's best track and praised Carla's "dense and fragile voice".

On "Il Vecchio e il Bambino", a murky and moving cover of a song by Italian Francesco Guccini, she describes an old man telling a child of the grass fields that have now been replaced by smoking factories.

Dominique Blanc-Francard, Bruni's new producer, has said he was trying to "amplify Carla's limited harmonic system".

The album reprises the charming understatement that made her debut "Quelqu'un m'a dit" such a pleasant surprise.

Her voice is, by turns, soft, silky and seductive, complemented by some lovely acoustic arrangements, sparingly embellished by harp, flute, clarinet, banjo and ukulele.

The proceeds go to charity.

Give her a chance !

Quelqu'un M'a Dit

No Promises

I was curious to hear this CD given Bruni's notoriety over the years. Overall it's a dull outing. The production is virtually identical from song to song, with Bruni's average voice (sounds like a French Dido) mixed far forward with almost no reverb in every song. And there's nary a backing vocal or harmony track anywhere on this CD. Just the same presentation song after song. Was the producer asleep?

And the writing? Well the first tune, "Ma Jeunesse", grabbed me until I realized it's a virtual carbon copy of the Beatles' "For No One", down to the French horn solo. (Paul & co. should sue for copyright infringement.) Beyond that, I didn't hear any great melodies here.

Overall she'll remain more famous for her "off the record" activities...