Nee Dans la Nature

SSC3032 2005-09-27

Track List

Nee Dans La Nature - 2:33
L'Age De Ma Mere - 2:25
Je T'aime Salaud - 3:45
Mary Poppins - 2:41
Can't Get You Out Of My Head - 4:36
Le Jardin Pres De La Falaise - 3:10
Aux Quatre Vents - 4:02
Les Fantomes - 4:00
Quand Tu Dors - 4:30
Je Nageais Nue - 4:24
Qui Es-Tu ? / *C'est Parapluie - 6:34

Musicians

Phillippe Katerine - backing vocals, guitar
Phillippe Eveno - backing vocals, guitar
Christopher "Disco" Minck - bass guitar, contrabass, harp, backing vocals
Christophe Lavergne - drums

On Helena’s third album,Née Dans La Nature ("Born in the Wild"), her longtime collaboration with Katerine has solidified and diversified while growing more specific.

Helena’s soft, breathlessly insinuating vocals and pared-down lyrics embrace her partner’s sweetly subversive and subtly nostalgic melodies, which have been compared to those of Serge Gainsbourg.

But her bracingly frank, tangy and aggressively female view of the human condition remains all her own. She sings about the inevitability of aging, childhood memories, a well-remembered Proustian delight in ripely uncouth body odors (an injury has left her with a compromised sense of smell), Mary Poppins (!) and romantic longings. A major highlight is her wryly inflected, English-language interpretation of Kylie Minogue’s Can’t Get You Out Of My Head.

While moving seamlessly between fragmented quotes from yé yé, chanson classique, bal musette, le jazz hot, and rock Français, her accompanists are unfailingly supportive but understated. Which is as it should be, because an artist of Helena’s stature does not need to shout. She understands that the strongest emotions are usually revealed in whispers, a lusty glance from across a room, in bed, amid silent tears....