Françoiz Breut - Vingt à trente mille jours

At first, this record (along with Une saison volée - I haven't yet listened to the first one) rather paled by comparison to the live Françoiz experience with which I was basically introduced to her sombre, nocturnal take on French pop. A few weeks on, though, its distinct charms have very much made themselves felt; all of the words I used to describe the concert are applicable to the record, but it's as if the music has been lightly drizzled in a further rain of gauzey melancholy and yearning and a kind of hazy distance...I can't put it better than that. Thinking of individual songs helps in illustrating that analogy/impression: "Le verre pilé", say, was an absolute show-stopper at the Corner, that lonely repeated drum fill seeming to portend something inexpressible and (for me, at least) summoning images of people standing solitary in the fog at water's edge, late autumn, night-time, with Breut's voice fluttering untethered around it; on record, the song has a more muffled, sinuous swirl to it and, well, it's different...anyway, that one, along with "Si tu disais" (a big call, this - but I think this one's as lushly romantic as pop music gets) and "L'affaire d'un jour" (a lovely dark-eyed brood), is my favourite on the album. Oh, but I've taken it all to heart...

By the way, darn if Vingt à trente mille jours doesn't have one of the most attractive covers (and general sleeve designs) that I've ever seen...