{"id":23655,"date":"2022-09-06T05:30:19","date_gmt":"2022-09-06T09:30:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=23655"},"modified":"2022-09-06T21:03:25","modified_gmt":"2022-09-07T01:03:25","slug":"ep-review-rue-66-partie-de-dames","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2022\/09\/06\/ep-review-rue-66-partie-de-dames\/","title":{"rendered":"EP Review: Rue ’66 — Partie de Dames"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"I\u2019ve written now and then (here<\/a> and here<\/a>, for example) about French pop of the 1960s. The so-called y\u00e9-y\u00e9 movement, and the charming if slightly odd insularity that characterized the scene. True, the French of that era didn\u2019t pay a lot of attention to what was going on musically outside of their country, preferring home-grown artists instead. But they had a vibrant and interesting thing going on themselves.<\/p>\n

And it was noticed abroad. Here were are more than a half century later, and people are still talking about it, listening to it, and making new music that follows on from French pop of the \u201860s. A San Francisco-based band cleverly named Rue \u201866 gets it exactly right on their latest EP, Partie de Dames<\/i> (I mistakenly thought it was titled MONO<\/i>).<\/p>\n

The title track unfolds inventively, serving up key sonic characteristics that helped define the subgenre of French pop. Chirpy horns, a solid electric bass line and some wonderfully fuzzed-out surf\u2019n\u2019spy guitar all enter the mix in the song\u2019s first few seconds. Some wonderful unison (or double-tracked) female lead vocals \u2013 in French, of course \u2013 are the icing on the croissant, as it were. The whole production aesthetic is note-perfect, and listeners could be forgiven for thinking the recording dates from the 1960s.<\/p>\n

\u201cNe me laisse pas laimer\u201d is ginchy pop in the Sylvie Vartan mold, with some catchy percussion and gurgling jazz-combo organ. The song blows by in well under two minutes, but that kind of brevity (and concise songwriting\/arrangement) is baked into the recipe. (You want extended works? Listen to Magma<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

\u201cMini Jupe \u2013 Buspad\u201d steals its riffs, but the swinging tune sounds a bit like what a dance party in The Village (aka Portmerion) might\u2019ve sounded like during Patrick McGoohan\u2019s little visit. The instrumental features a blazing guitar solo and another solo by the organ; the beefy horn section plays the role of lead vocalist.<\/p>\n

This ten-minute EP concludes with a live track. \u201cMy girl Josephine\u201d picks up the baton once held by Johnny Hallyday. It\u2019s a straight-ahead, \u201850s flavored rocker, played with \u201860s spirit (joie de vivre<\/em>, one might say) and verve, and features Serge Martial belting out the Francophone love lyrics.<\/p>\n

Not reviewed here but well worth seeking out is an earlier release from Rue \u201866, the group\u2019s full-length, 12 song self-titled debut from 2019. It showcases the depth and versatility of the group, and bends a few well-known songs into the Rue \u201866 style. 12-string guitars on \u201cJe t\u2019iame quand m\u00eame\u201d are straight out of Peter and Gordon\u2019s \u201cA World Without Love,\u201d and that alone makes the album worth hearing. But even better is \u201cCes bottes sont faites pour marcher.\u201d If your French is lacking, here\u2019s a hint: Nancy Sinatra sang it in English. And better still is a note-perfect reading of a garage-psych classic, We the People\u2019s \u201cIn the Past.\u201d Retitled here as \u201cLafermeture-\u00e9clair,\u201d it maintains all the sinister power of the original.<\/p>\n

The past \u2013 French pop style, anyway \u2013 is in good hands with Rue \u201866.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve written now and then (here and here, for example) about French pop of the 1960s. The so-called y\u00e9-y\u00e9 movement, and the charming if slightly odd insularity that characterized the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23656,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,51,65],"tags":[4924,4923],"class_list":["post-23655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-release","category-pop","category-review","tag-rue-66","tag-ye-ye","cat-49-id","cat-51-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23655"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23655\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23675,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23655\/revisions\/23675"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}