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After the runaway success of her charming, folksy first album Quelqu'un M'a Dit, Carla Bruni's sophomore effort takes a more difficult route and sees her setting canonical works by such poets as Yeats and Emily Dickinson to music, often calamitously. W.H. Auden's "At Last the Secret Is Out" offers a case in point. Set to a brisk Jack Johnson-style swinging guitar, the poem becomes stripped of all its meaning: no one word is allowed to stand out, as each line is madly shoehorned into a sensible rhythm, and the wistful, yearning tone of the poem gets lost in the breezy melody of the song. Therein lies the problem. Bruni's blues guitar template is too rigid to allow these words to breathe. The lines "Wrapping that foul body up/In as foul a rag" in Yeats' "Those Dancing Days Are Gone" are delivered almost winsomely, where in fact the word "foul" should be allowed to drag, and to weigh down the rest of the line. Metered verse cannot fit this sort of verse-verse-chorus model. Of course, an album must be judged on its musical merits, and the overall mixture of rhythm and pedal steel guitars, with a touch of harmonica here and there, is a serviceable foil to Bruni's smoky voice. But even here, one would wish for more clarity in the line readings: the breathlessness of her singing means that sentences often fizzle out. Dorothy Parker's stark "Afternoon" is maltreated in this way, as is Emily Dickinson's wonderful poem "I Felt My Life with Both My Hands" -- and the absurd jauntiness of both songs is almost unbearable. The one highlight of the set is the doo wop piano-and-guitar jam on Dickinson's "If You Were Coming in the Fall," which lends itself oddly well to Bruni's sauce. But this is an impersonal set of disparate poems set often unimaginatively to incongruous arrangements. It is a brave failure, but a failure nonetheless.
© Caspar Salmon /TiVo
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William Butler Yeats, Author - Carla Bruni, Composer, Interprète Vocal, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer - Louis Bertignac, Producer, Mixer, Mastering Engineer, Guitar, Recording Engineer, AssociatedPerformer, StudioPersonnel - Hervé Koster, Drums, AssociatedPerformer - Charles Pasi, Harmonica, AssociatedPerformer
℗ 2006 Teorema
William Butler Yeats, Author - Carla Bruni, Composer, Interprète Vocal, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer - Louis Bertignac, Producer, Mixer, Drums, Mastering Engineer, Guitar, Organ, Viola, Recording Engineer, Interprète Instrumental, AssociatedPerformer, StudioPersonnel - Paco Sery, Cymbals, AssociatedPerformer - Cyril Denis, AssociatedPerformer, Bass (Vocal)
℗ 2006 Teorema
Carla Bruni, Interprète Vocal, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer, ComposerLyricist - Louis Bertignac, Producer, Mixer, Mastering Engineer, Guitar, Organ, Recording Engineer, Interprète Instrumental, Conga, AssociatedPerformer, StudioPersonnel, Bass (Vocal) - Wystan Hugh Auden, ComposerLyricist - Paco Sery, Drum, AssociatedPerformer
℗ 2006 Teorema
Carla Bruni, Composer, Interprète Vocal, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer - Emily Dickinson, Author - Louis Bertignac, Producer, Mixer, Mastering Engineer, Guitar, Keyboards, Recording Engineer, AssociatedPerformer, StudioPersonnel - Hervé Koster, Drum, AssociatedPerformer - Paco Sery, Interprète Instrumental, AssociatedPerformer - Cyril Denis, AssociatedPerformer, Bass (Vocal)
℗ 2006 Teorema
Christina Rossetti, Author - Carla Bruni, Composer, Interprète Vocal, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer - Louis Bertignac, Producer, Mixer, Mastering Engineer, Guitar, Percussion, Recording Engineer, Mellotron, Cembalo, Interprète Instrumental, AssociatedPerformer, StudioPersonnel - Cyril Denis, AssociatedPerformer, Bass (Vocal)
℗ 2006 Teorema
Carla Bruni, Composer, Interprète Vocal, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer - Walter de la Mare, Author - Louis Bertignac, Producer, Mixer, Mastering Engineer, Guitar, Keyboards, Percussion, Piano, Recording Engineer, Interprète Instrumental, AssociatedPerformer, StudioPersonnel - Charles Pasi, Harmonica, AssociatedPerformer - Antoine Massoni, AssociatedPerformer, Bass (Vocal) - Pierre Demarty, Piano, AssociatedPerformer
℗ 2006 Teorema
Carla Bruni, Composer, Interprète Vocal, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer - Emily Dickinson, Author - Louis Bertignac, Producer, Mixer, Mastering Engineer, Guitar, Keyboards, Piano, Recording Engineer, AssociatedPerformer, StudioPersonnel - Hervé Koster, Drum, AssociatedPerformer - Paco Sery, Percussion, AssociatedPerformer - Cyril Denis, AssociatedPerformer, Bass (Vocal)
℗ 2006 Teorema
Laurence Allalah, Cello, AssociatedPerformer - Carla Bruni, Composer, Interprète Vocal, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer - Emily Dickinson, Author - Louis Bertignac, Producer, Mixer, Mastering Engineer, Guitar, Keyboards, Percussion, Recording Engineer, Interprète Instrumental, AssociatedPerformer, StudioPersonnel - Paco Sery, Drum, AssociatedPerformer - Antoine Massoni, AssociatedPerformer, Bass (Vocal)
℗ 2006 Teorema
Dorothy Parker, Author - Carla Bruni, Composer, Interprète Vocal, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer - Louis Bertignac, Producer, Mixer, Mastering Engineer, Guitar, Keyboards, Percussion, Recording Engineer, Interprète Instrumental, AssociatedPerformer, StudioPersonnel - Antoine Massoni, AssociatedPerformer, Bass (Vocal)
℗ 2006 Teorema
Dorothy Parker, Author - Carla Bruni, Composer, Interprète Vocal, MainArtist, AssociatedPerformer - Louis Bertignac, Producer, Mixer, Mastering Engineer, Flute, Guitar, Keyboards, Percussion, Tuba, Recording Engineer, Interprète Instrumental, AssociatedPerformer, StudioPersonnel
℗ 2006 Teorema
Laurence Allalah, Cello, AssociatedPerformer - Carla Bruni, Composer, MainArtist - Curtis Brown, Author - Louis Bertignac, Producer, Mixer, Mastering Engineer, Guitar, Keyboards, Percussion, Recording Engineer, Sitar, Mellotron, Tabla, Interprète Instrumental, AssociatedPerformer, StudioPersonnel, Bass (Vocal)
℗ 2006 Teorema
Album review
After the runaway success of her charming, folksy first album Quelqu'un M'a Dit, Carla Bruni's sophomore effort takes a more difficult route and sees her setting canonical works by such poets as Yeats and Emily Dickinson to music, often calamitously. W.H. Auden's "At Last the Secret Is Out" offers a case in point. Set to a brisk Jack Johnson-style swinging guitar, the poem becomes stripped of all its meaning: no one word is allowed to stand out, as each line is madly shoehorned into a sensible rhythm, and the wistful, yearning tone of the poem gets lost in the breezy melody of the song. Therein lies the problem. Bruni's blues guitar template is too rigid to allow these words to breathe. The lines "Wrapping that foul body up/In as foul a rag" in Yeats' "Those Dancing Days Are Gone" are delivered almost winsomely, where in fact the word "foul" should be allowed to drag, and to weigh down the rest of the line. Metered verse cannot fit this sort of verse-verse-chorus model. Of course, an album must be judged on its musical merits, and the overall mixture of rhythm and pedal steel guitars, with a touch of harmonica here and there, is a serviceable foil to Bruni's smoky voice. But even here, one would wish for more clarity in the line readings: the breathlessness of her singing means that sentences often fizzle out. Dorothy Parker's stark "Afternoon" is maltreated in this way, as is Emily Dickinson's wonderful poem "I Felt My Life with Both My Hands" -- and the absurd jauntiness of both songs is almost unbearable. The one highlight of the set is the doo wop piano-and-guitar jam on Dickinson's "If You Were Coming in the Fall," which lends itself oddly well to Bruni's sauce. But this is an impersonal set of disparate poems set often unimaginatively to incongruous arrangements. It is a brave failure, but a failure nonetheless.
© Caspar Salmon /TiVo
About the album
- 1 disc(s) - 11 track(s)
- Total length: 00:34:34
- 1 Digital booklet
- Main artists: Carla Bruni
- Composer: Various Composers
- Label: Universal Music Division Barclay
- Genre: World Europe French Music
© 2007 Teorema, under exclusive license to Verve Label Group, a Division of UMG Recordings, Inc ℗ 2007 Teorema, under exclusive license to Verve Label Group, a Division of UMG Recordings, Inc
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