Camille

Camille, a 26-year-old Parisian chanteuse who is being hailed as the “French Björk,” is confounding all the clichés about contemporary French music with her original second album, Le Fil (The Thread), produced by EMI France, which is earning rave reviews. The “thread” that runs through all the songs on the album is a droning note (extended on its own, annoyingly, at the end of the last song). This thread holds together a varied collection of minimalist, mostly voiced-based songs with arrangements that show the influence of African chants and, yes, Björk, especially in the a cappela “Senza,” with its intricately interwoven vocalizing. Her first album, Le Sac des Filles, which came out in 2002, was less well received, but she is now the chou-chou of France’s leftist press.

Heidi Ellison

© 2005 Paris Update