à Fleur de Peau

Album review

Turning her back on the different schools of jazz, French singer Cyrille Aimée made the decision very early on to head off for the US, spending over ten years in the raw and unadulterated school of jam sessions from Brooklyn to New Orleans. After thoroughly exploring the repertoire of the American Songbook and distinguishing herself as a performer, applying a timbre of great freshness and true vocal dexterity to a taste for improvisation that happens to be quite rare for vocalists, Cyrille Aimée has spent the past few years venturing off toward less traditional horizons, be it in dedicating the entirety of an album to the sophisticated world of Stephen Sondheim, or in paying homage to the music of New Orleans (Petite Fleur, with the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra).

As her 40th birthday approaches, she has released A fleur de peau, which is undoubtedly her most personal record to date. Developed in close collaboration with New York producer and multi-instrumentalist Jake Sherman, this album has the particularity of consisting of, for the first time in her career, original compositions in which Cyrille Aimée reveals her true nature. Juggling between languages (English, Spanish, French) as well as musical styles, finding inspiration in her mother’s Dominican roots with languid, pulsating Afro-Latino melodies and rhythms (“Historia de Amor”), as well as in English-language pop music (“Here”), French chanson (“Ma Préférence”), and 80’s soul (the Isley Brothers cover “For the Love of You”), Cyrille Aimée plunges with her rebellious and sensual voice into the furthest depths of hybridity and sophistication, mixing acoustic, vintage-sounding instruments (voluptuous brass and organ riffs) with deliciously retro synthetic sounds. From the outset, this album, eclectic and full of charm, could very well be the prologue to a new chapter in the singer’s atypical and eventful career. © Stéphane Ollivier/Qobuz