Music > Album Reviews

Camille - Oui

27/07/17

Released in June, Ouï has just topped the album charts in Camille Dalmais' native France. On this side of La Manche, Camille remains perhaps less well known, although is still remembered for her association with lounge/new-wave fusionists Nouvelle Vague, the band who in 2004 released a  collection of easy-listening and bossa nova covers of classic punk hits. Thirteen years on, and five solo albums later, Camille has become one of France's most spectacular and innovative vocalists.

Oui sets out to explore themes of birth, growth and life over the course of eleven tracks. Mostly recorded in her native French, Ouï  begins with muted keyboards and a beating drum alongside breathy vocals in Sous Le Sable. Seeds (the only track performed in English) again commences percussively, this time with a military beat, but is overlaid with disarming and beautiful messages about reaping what we sow. Les Loups becomes a baroque madrigal boosted by a growling synth before Je Ne Mache Pas Mes Mots restores an air of ethereality. Twix, with its naïve nursery rhyme simplicity, uses both French and English in a slightly manic parable of planting apples alongside chocolate bars.

Beautiful, innovative and, I think you will find, strangely addictive.

8/10