C’EST LA VIE FOR FRANCOISE, JANE AND WIND BACK WEDNESDAY

There’s never a bad time for cross-cultural rapprochement, whether on matters literary, migration, entente cordiale, or ignoring Australia unless they win at Parc de Princes or Wimbledon.

But right now, with the coincidence of an (overdue) joint recognition of a state under siege, a partnership to balance a lunatic across the pond, awaiting returning troops from a fiery battle of (fuck) wits with pissed-up golf fans, and a TV series where women run Britain and France and maybe/maybe not help each other, it seems an ideal time for hands across the Channel/La Manche.

So Wind Back Wednesday celebrates 20 years since a Frenchwoman who sang in English occasionally but said it all best in French, and an Englishwoman who sang in French often but was never restricted to the continent – or the continental divide – released albums nearly simultaneously. And even joined for one song.

Say bonjour to Francoise Hardy and Jane Birkin, who died within a year of each other not that long ago, for a trio of records that might do more for relations between Britain and France than a lifetime’s supply of Pret-a-Manger.  

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FRANCOISE HARDY

Tant De Belles Choses (Virgin/EMI)

JANE BIRKIN

Rendez-vous and Arabesque (Capitol/EMI)

Francoise Hardy

IN A CAREER which goes back 40 years to the effortless seduction of Tout Les Carcons Et Les Filles, Francoise Hardy has not only dealt in the melancholy. But so beautifully has she articulated its many facets, from sweet pain to yearning to despair that I suspect in your Hugo French/English dictionary under the word tristesse it says: see also Hardy, Francoise.

Likewise, Hardy has not always figured in the consciousness of non-Francophone popular music fans. But in your pop dictionary under acts such as Portishead, Goldfrapp, and Marianne Faithful you may well find it says: see also Hardy, Francoise.

Tant De Belles Chose is suffused with tristesse. Subdued in its tone, muted in its palette (tragic torch song; touches of gentle bossa nova; Air-like atmospherics) it is the sound of the sigh and the small shudder of recognition and the sense of a warm and quiet room whose only light is from a rain-sprinkled window.

When Hardy, in one of a pair of songs sung in English, says “it’s so strange the things we wish for, the things we thought we couldn’t do without”, you feel lights dimming. Equally, when she eases into the drifting minor keys of the title track, you don’t need to understand French to feel the regret. It makes for a softly alluring album.

Hardy joins Jane Birkin for the early evening stroll of Surannee on Birkin’s charming and rewarding album of duets, Rendezvous. While not quite the singer Hardy is, Birkin has always been more than the girlish counterpoint to former husband Serge Gainsbourg and his songs of crumbling decadence and corrupting love.

On Rendez-vous she glides from the playful percussive tease of Je M’apelle Jane, with Mickey 3D, and the cocktail ambience of her duet with Alain Chamfort, to the disturbing domestic lust of In Every Dream Home A Heartache, sung with Bryan Ferry, and the sleaze of Smile, written by and sung with Placebo’s Brian Molko. There are adult themes here, spoken and unspoken.

Jane Birkin

Arabesque sees Birkin repositioning 16 Gainsbourg songs somewhere between the Arab crescent, North Africa and southern Spain. Arabic strings, percussion rather than western drum kits, and an emphasis on rhythms which push forward the songs surround her.

But Birkin never lets Gainsbourg’s melodies, and the pointedness of his lyrics, become subsumed. If anything there are intriguing extensions provided, as in L’amour De Moi and Valse De Melody where vocalist Moumen brings a keening poignancy to the already character-rich delivery of Birkin.