Just before the festive season, Céline Dion has released Sans attendre, her 14th French album in a career spanning 30 years and two languages. The songs, written especially for her, have a particularly personal ring.
In the run-up to the fifty-year anniversary of Edith Piaf’s death, Patricia Kaas kicks off a long list of celebrations with Kaas chante Piaf, a tribute album recorded with the London Royal Philharmonic Orchestra directed by Abel Korzeniowski, and devotes a whole stage show to the “Little Sparrow”.
For as long as he can remember, Bob Dylan has been a source of admiration and inspiration for Francis Cabrel. At the end of this year, the release of Cabrel’s thirteenth studio album, Vise le ciel ou Bob Dylan revisité coincides with thirty-five years spent in the business. RFI Musique takes a look at the album.
Barely a year after its release in Quebec, Robert Charlebois’ new album, Tout est bien, is available in France at last. Coming a decade after the spare Doux Sauvage, the collection brings us twelve new symphonically orchestrated songs that already sound like classics. RFI Musique met up with the Canadian singer.
Ten years ago, Rodolphe Burger borrowed the expression "This is a Velvet Underground song that I’d like to sing" from the singer Nico for a track on Meteor Show Extended. Now the alchemist of French rock is reactivating his Dernière Bande label with a new album that pays a faithful tribute to the cult group from Warhol’s Factory.
After the release of Infréquentable in 2008, Bénabar put a hold on his usual writing-singing-composing career to focus on film then theatre. Now he has returned to music with Les Bénéfices du doute, a disconcerting sixth album that has dropped the familiar brass to leave way for the banjo and the harmonica.
It’s something he’d wanted to do for a while, and now Alain Souchon has fulfilled a dream in bringing out a new CD to help children suffering from cancer. He chose to interpret the songs that marked his own childhood: tunes that have stayed in his mind, that he sang to his own son and still hums under the shower. For the title, he chose A cause d’elles, since it’s because of these songs that Alain Souchon has become what he is.
After earning her stripes with the Super Rail Band in Bamako, in late 2009 Inna Modja released a first soul-focused album underlined by simple touches of folk, pop and funk. Her new compilation Love Revolution champions the art of loving yourself and others. The pop and soul are still just as present, but with an additional dancefloor dimension.
Four years have flown since Thomas Dutronc made a splash when he sold over 600,000 copies of his first album, Un manouche sans guitare. After an intense 600-date tour comes his new, highly awaited compilation, Silence on tourne, on tourne en rond.
They’ve performed their Bantu Groove at venues all round the world. Thirteen years after their first album, and despite losing several of the group’s charismatic members, Mascase are back centre stage. The band boasts a new line-up and some brand new tracks, but their desire to blend Bantu music with modern rhythms is unchanged.
