Seen from Paris, blog about Paris

You thought Parisians are witty, arrogant, bitching about everything and anything, obsessed with food and culture, and always up for discussion? Well... you're perfectly right! And you're on the right page to check it out.

Bang Bang. Revolver shoots again; the bullet goes right in Melody’s heart.

For their second album, the Parisian trio confirms their leadership in complex arrangements, and push Pop de Chambre to the front fo the stage…

It probably started discretely, in some Paris garrets, in some café basement, in a cousin’s garden. Ambroise Willaume had a guitar, Christophe Musset also, and Jérémie Arcache a cello. And they all wanted to sing. And they all had a little altar in their mind, where the 60s was the Light. Bien sûr, they were instantly compared to the Beatles, and they deserve it, after all their very name comes from the Liverpool’s band 1966 album “Revolver”. But it is not just a tribute; they actually are on a mission to take this very album further.

Maybe you are not yet acquainted with Baroque pop. The Beatles’s “Revolver” is a good example of that sophisticated and delicate side of pop/rock music, which got its name from the search of classical harmonies, the use of traditional acoustic instruments, sometimes even the harpsichord, and that spread out mostly from the UK. A quick wikipedia search would give you a good idea of the main examples of that movement. And when one listens to Revolver, it all makes sens.

The first album was definitely more baroque folk though, with a sound that Simon and Garfunkel would not have rejected. At this point, they call their style Pop de Chambre, which could be seen as a pun (Chamber pop, like chamber pot, we really have to explain everything! I couldn’t help it…) but is a real artistic statement, creating a new generation of Chamber Music, that classical music played in intimate spaces with only a few instruments. By calling their first album “Music for a while”, they push the statement further: they inherited directly from Henry Purcell and the British Baroque scene, as well as they intend to serve the same purpose.

And now, after different tours in different living rooms, they come back with Let Go, which is pretty much like getting Canada, India and Louisiana back from the British: Darn, the best British Baroque Pop band is Parisian now! With amazing melodies, changing rhythms and sumptuous polyphonic mazes, this alternative masterpiece shoots 12 gilded bullets straight in your ears. A little French Touch, Phoenix style, to definitely snob the Brits, and you have the sound that will go in your headphone in the next month. Allez, try it out, it’s a classic…