A serpent woman haunts Cecile McLorin Salvant's dreams on her boldly realized seventh album, 2023's Mélusine. Inspired by the European folktale most famously detailed by 14th century French writer Jean d'Arras, Mélusine tells the tale of a shapeshifting maiden, half-serpent/half-woman, whose righteous anger takes on ever-more dualistic meanings under Salvant's dynamic musical sway. Having been lavished with accolades, including several Grammy Awards for her clarion, swinging jazz and French chanson-infused albums, Salvant has increasingly leaned into the more stylistically experimental and personal aspects of her artistry. It was an approach she took to new levels with 2022's Ghost Song, performing her poetic originals alongside unexpected covers of songs by Kate Bush and Sting. Centered on the title track, which she composed during the Ghost Song sessions, Mélusine is a gorgeously realized production. Although there are some English lyrics here, the album features the most French Salvant has sung on record. Thankfully, she offers translations of each song with a sentence that also highlights how each track illuminates the story.The album also finds Salvant (who produced the album with Tom Korkidis) pulling together all of her disparate influences, from her moody cabaret jazz reading of Charles Trenet's "La Route Enchantee" to her playfully mischievous interpretation of the 14th century composition "Dites Moi Que Je Suis Belle," the latter of which is done in dancerly duet with djembe percussion master Weedie Braimah. Along with Braimah, she's joined throughout by several longtime associates including pianists Sullivan Fortner and Aaron Diehl, bassists Paul Sikivie and Luques Curtis, drummers Kyle Pool and Obed Calvaire, and saxophonist Godwin Louis. Shifting the line-up track to track, Salvant offers inspired forays into '70s sci-fi-inspired Canadian musical theater ("Petite Musique Terrienne" from Starmania), the dramatic French pop of Veronique Sanson ("Le Temps est Assassin"), and an Afro-Latin take on 12th century troubadour Almuc Castelnau's "Dame Iseut" that Salvant sings in both Occitan and Haitian Creole, languages that underline her own rich dual heritage. There's even a synthesizer-accented take on Michel Lambert's haunting 1660 air de coeur "D'un Feu Secret" that sounds like electronic composer Suzanne Ciani, Ella Fitzgerald, and the Modern Jazz Quartet giving a Baroque court performance. Her originals here are just as stylistically wide-ranging as she pulls together jazz and Haitian compas rhythms on "Doudou," accompanies herself on analog synth on "Wedo," and weaves a dreamy overlay of vocals and electric piano on "Aida." It almost goes without saying that Salvant's voice is utterly sublime on Mélusine, rich with an earthy jazz warmth on one song and shimmering with a brightly attenuated operatic resonance on another. There's also a feeling that for her, the story of a half-serpent half-woman is in keeping with her life as a Black woman raised in Miami by a Haitian father and French mother. Whether it's with the themes of romantic heartbreak and bodily autonomy, or the global boundary-pushing musicality at play on Mélusine, Salvant's work is transcendent.© Matt Collar /TiVo

Download not available

Download not available
Mano Solo's debut album, La Marmaille Nue (1993), was one of his most successful, selling over 100,000 copies without the benefit of any smash hit singles. Informed by punk rock as well as blues, the 15-track alternative rock effort is also the French singer/songwriter's most enduring. Amid his deep catalog of album releases, it remains one of his best-selling and most celebrated.© Jason Birchmeier /TiVo

Download not available

Download not available

Download not available

Download not available
Chansons Eternelles is a decent, 14-song overview of Mistinguett's recordings in the early days of the phonograph record, mixing Continental European music, vaudeville-music hall-cabaret theatricality, and a little bit of early jazz. She doesn't have the pipes of some of the era's more refined and classically-aligned vocalists, but sings in a vivacious manner projecting an appetite for life. So if that's what you want to get in the mood of what it might have been like in the more heedlessly optimistic quarters of post-World War I France, this might be one of your tickets, though some of the tunes verge on good-natured martial fanfares. There are, naturally, a few homages to Paris, and songs like "Je Cherche un Millionaire" ("I'm Looking for a Millionaire") convey the unapologetic yearning for the upscale life prevalent in much popular music of the era.© Richie Unterberger /TiVo