Marianne Dissard
(Self-released)
Tucson-based French chanteuse Marianne Dissard calls this her "in-between" record, a live-in-the-studio set featuring songs from her 2008 recording, L'Entredeux, and her upcoming late-2010 release L'Abandon. Recorded in Paris, the download-for-free One Takes only includes four new tracks among its 14, so it's mostly a showcase for her excellent touring band, which includes members of Mostly Bears (guitarist/vocalist Brian Lopez and bassist Geoff Hidalgo) and Calexico/Y La Orkestra (drummer/pianist Sergio Mendoza).
The band is stupid-tight coming off 30 dates in one month, but Dissard remains center-stage while integrating with the others sans seams. Her smoky voice is capable of bedroom seduction and temper-tantrum passion, and all the Gallic stops in between; she sounds as urgent as Patti Smith, as indifferent as Nico, and as sexy as Nancy Sinatra. The instrumental star may be Olivier Samouillan, whose viola/violin colors these songs in various shades of romance, eroticism, exoticism, nostalgia and fury. Samouillan's strings shadow Lopez' desert-noir guitar on the Joey Burns/Dissard-penned "Le Lendemain," adding a plangent Dirty 3 feel, while on the sultry bedroom waltz "Les Draps Sourd," he sounds like Stephane Grappelli dueling with Link Wray rather than Django. Samouillan even incorporates the instrument into the psychedelic garage rock rave-up "Trop Expres" through various scratches and scrapes, and grabs the mandolin to further twang up the country rocker "Sans-Facon" without making you once think "bluegrass." Lopez, too, is a revelation, morphing his guitar sound into whatever the songs call for and adding emotive-yet-slick fills all over the shop. He also sings compelling harmonies, and his English counterparts to Dissard's French on Mendoza's lament "It's Love" and his own, first-blush love song "El Pajaro Y El Ciervo" make already good tracks great.
Those are two of the four new cuts here, and they all suggest that the excellent L'Entredeux was no fluke, and maybe even just a first step toward even greater things. How do you say "can't hardly wait" in French, anyway?
Standout Tracks: "Indiana Song" "It's Love" "Le Jour de L'Anniversaire" "El Pajaro Y El Ciervo" JOHN SCHACHT
