Arnaud Fleurent Didier La Reproduction. The rioting by students in France has seemingly lost its glamourous luster in recent weeks. Protesting over not being able ot retire on a government funded pension at 62 versus 60 does not rival a blood soaked campaign to rid your country of a murderous dictator I suppose. Poor french students must be soaked in collective existential angst. I keep using the word ennui and so there I refrained. I can imagine Arnaud at the barricades, pulling up the cobblestones, oh wait, Chirac paved over the cobblestones in the 70s. Can they pull up the asphalt and fling this in sympathy with the peasants of the past? The first song here is French Culture and it may concern pulling up the cobblestones to discover the beach but i am not sure. I took two years of French in high school. I took French mostly because my mother is French Canadian and I had this vision that I would return home from school and hand her my homework and she would hand it back to me in five minutes perfect and complete. But my mother can only speak French when she is speaking to her family members on the telephone and even then she is so out of practice it is more a crepuscular mix of French and English. Arnaud would be appalled. I don't quite understand those who defend specifics of their culture. Is he moaning about McDonalds or Baby Gap when he sings of the "praises" of French Culture? I don't know. I am at a severe handicap here because I am an ignorant American. Second track has ben playing a bit, so lovely, soft strings int he background, some chansons-esque guitars, his tender voice. His voice is hard to categorize, it's not as fey or effeminate as say the guy in Orwell but it isn't a pop voice the same as Fugu either. A good deal of the time he's speaking melodically. Such as in the beginning of song three. Part of the reason I don't understand defending your culture as if it is under assault from the barbarians outside the gate is the difference between being an American and a European. I imagine Arnaud strives to be identified as continuous in a tradition of french exceptionalism in the arts He's a student of the tradition, he's probably excluded a good deal of the world outside of his narrow worldview(this is all hopeless speculation, could be he's got a photo of William Peterson on his wall and thinks Jeff Foxworthy a god among men) and so he's concocted some sort of emotional algorithm and alters his position in it based on his level of mental health for any particular day. As an American I don't feel part of any cultural progression. I explained in the last entry why I feel American culture is in a dominant position in this past century and that is because it is not identifiably "American" because it is malleable and it is permeable to diverse ideas from all over the world and more importantly we don't have guardians to ensure the quality of what reaches the public. Government funded art is censorship. It isn't any different than the state compelling participation in a state religion. But somehow if the state funds the arts we are meant to think the money just organically flows to artists in need regardless of their political intent, their politcal connections and the whims of fashion. And as a privileged member of said tradition it has probably come to pass that Arnaud feels entitled, as entitled as anyone else, to the public largesse that he surely requires to continue his music career. He's brilliant. That's a certainty. But if the world did not have another Arnaud Fleurent Didier record we'd survive. It is strange how there are all of these anti-consumerism movements apace at the moment which are just reheated socialist manifesto nonsense "to each according to his needs" but we are meant to perpetually fund lavish benefits for "public servants". They are public employees. They work for a paycheck the same as the rest of us and probably for less than that. We recruit young, college educated types to our workplace and as soon as they have the opportunity they abandon us and our ruthless demands for efficiency and move onto the public payroll. The flight from risk. Anyhow, what song are we on? I'm listening to Frankie and the Heartstrings at the moment, if we are being honest, it's exciting, stupid and fun. The track playing now is Reproductions, and it's marvelous, a mid tempo piano led ballad and he's singing in a lilting tone and it's marvelous. I said that. Who to compare him to? When he was more prone to flourishes of baroque overstatement it was easy to compare him to Neil Hannon. The french Neil Hannon. What an insult! I imagine this is more complex than a Divine Comedy record, musically speaking. Is it as witty and charming? Unknown. Doubtful. He once recorded Dominique De Villepin's rebuttal to the US's referral of Iraq for violating UN sanctions and put it to music and released it as a single, that seems more in line with someone who takes himself rather too seriously, desperately so. But part of the charm of sophisticated pop music is knowing the creator probably thinks very little of his average listener. I imagine David Grubbs and Jim O'Rourke having very little patience for their listeners, especially should they deign to express their opinion in public. I've never written about those two, here is my short summing up of their entire oeuvre-eh. I bought Camofleur once and listened a few times and nothing ever came of it, I think I decided I didn't want to keep packing it when I was moving and it died a terrible death in the bottom of a community rubbish bin. Oh dear. I could have repurposed it, gone green, as a present for someone at work celebrating their 10th anniversary on the job. "Congratulations for making it this far, here's a Gastr Del Sol record for all of your troubles. Cheers!". I really love the song that is playing now. It's surely something to do with the student protests of 1968. This was before the Chirac-ian asphalt. This was when lucky Americans were allowed to have sexual intercourse with Eva Green. Oh wait. That's covered in the next track which concerns Cinema. Does Arnaud believe that french cinema is in the vanguard? Undoubtedly. I keep impugning the man but this is a magnificent record. I am just exercising my xenophobic muscles. Not really. I am keen on French music and French Film and French Food. I am less keen on their politics or their societal covenants. I am not listening to the words. One of the joys of listening to music composed in a language I do not understand is that I can fill in my own plot based on the atmosphere of the song. Je Vais Au Cinema which I actually know the translation of "I go to the cinema" seems celebratory and cheerful and he could be singing about Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron or Emmanuelle Beart or Sylvia Kristel, who knows, he seems to be charmed by whatever. Next track, more of the brooding version of himself, it starts minimally with his speaking/singing and then a layering of choral vocals and then into a charming vignette type number where he's surely recalling some traumatic emotional event that has left him scarred for life but he's working it out in some sort of caustic catharsis in pop song. Surely. The song has ebbs and flows like a pop tide that tugs and pushes and girdles and exclaims all within a few bars. The backing vocals have returned but the "chorus" is gentle and rolling, like a spring through a idyllic french countryside. The tension has been relieved, it's a frolic through a tulip garden at the moment but slowly the steam builds to critical. End. Stunning. The bad thing is that he can probably understand English and so he will be doubly exercised by my ignorance. I apologize. Next track is My Space Oddity, another mid-tempo Piano led number. Whatever happened to Ema Derton? He released that split record with some Notre Dame/Arnaud songs and some Ema Derton songs and then nothing. Did Emilie Renaudat reveal that she voted for Sarkozy in the last election? Sacre Bleu. I can cliche. This one is wordy and dextrous, a bit Pearlfishers mid-tempo ballad. I would love to see a David Scott/Arnaud collaboration, it could be some dreadful exposition on collectivist politics. Has David worked that out of his system now? Eco Schools was an amazing track turned silly by the words. I suppose part of his boyish appeal lies at least party in the unformed political innocence. Ha, look at how condescending I am. I am part French-Canadian after all. They could write a track excoriating Scott Walker and his similarities to Adolf Hitler. It would be a laugh but possibly sumptuous and beautiful. Current track is a gorgeous piano ballad, piano leads most of these tracks, his voice is multi-tracked and impressively amplified in moments that are necessary to create pop singer drama. Now a avant garde moment of discordant fills and the piano melody underneath. It is all so lovely. I think this is better than the first solo record and on par with his Notre Dame records. Everything has fallen away but the piano and his voice, sigh. How is it that he is relegated to obscurity while disposable fluff such as Phoenix is loved and admired? But then Phoenix fit nicely in the pantheon of indiepop relics that are championed by the strangest sorts of people. Like when Pitchfork and their types went agog over 69 Love songs or Summer Hymns or The Microphones when none of those records, well Magnetic Fields are in a different category altogether but funny that every record since has been panned even the last which is amazing and wonderful, but then Summer Hymns and the Microphones are hardly seminal indiepop records and yet they have the seal of approval affixed that allows them to elude the derision offered for most indiepop music in certain quarters. Granted, the majority of indiepop music is a disaster and probably doesn't receive as much vitriol and denigration as it deserves but there are better things to establish the brand to the greater public and it is frustrating. Only slightly. Not actually. Last track, a soft acoustic ballad with delicate strings in the background now, this could have started life as an Ema Derton song. Again so many words. Must be a lot on his mind, pour my soul into the verses and let the world wash away all of my sins. Will this end up in the vault where all of the most precious bits of french culture are stored for protection from the coming holocaust? Possibly. It's wonderful. Dear nuclear armageddon progenitors, please do not bomb this record. A Recorder!