Unfortunately there is currently a problem with the Amazon widget creator which means that I have only been able to include seven tracks from the album on the widget to the left. Luckily they are seven of the best. You can hear samples from all tracks here.

Unless something spectacular happens over the next four weeks, I can confidently state that La Belle Étoile is the finest French language album of 2009. I absolutely adore it.

I was privileged to be able to catch two performances by Babylon Circus while they were on the UK leg of their current European tour and given half a chance I fully intend to travel over to France and see them again in the new year.

They are one of the best live bands I’ve ever seen and I for one hope they gain the massive recognition they deserve.

La Belle Étoile, released in March 2009, is something of a musical departure for the band whose last album was release five years ago. Previous studio releases have been packed with hard ska and reggae beats and more than a dash of the revendicatif. This album is slightly more melodic and slightly more subtle and devastating with its attack on your whatever part of your brain is responsible for trapping catchy songs in the internal humbox.

Every base is covered from the thumping, concert-opening Perdu, the thumping, crowd-pleasing La Cigarette, to the understated Des Fois and Le Fils Caché Du Pape to the gorgeous voice of Karina Zeviani on Marions-nous au soleil and the embarrassingly-catchy Nina.

What can I say? I love it. I urge you to use the Amazon widget to the left to listen to extracts.

Tomorrow I will publish a translation of one of the tracks – haven’t decided which yet.

The song he is attacking is the song I’m going to translate today.

Marie Mai first gained fame as one of the finalists of Star Académie, a Québécois version of those shows such as X-Factor, Pop Idol, etc… that we have all come to know and [hate/love/ignore]. A talented singer who would be unlikely to make the cut on an English version as we seem to prefer to pick people that we can use for headline-fodder rather than finding real singers.

Her style is very much in the same arena as that of Avril Lavigne and although I’m not sure if I should admit it, I have to say that I do kind of enjoy this sort of rocky pop when it’s done well. Albeit in small doses.

The 2007 album Dangereuse Attraction opened with a very strong track called Mentir. As you may already know I keep a play list of songs to help me make it through my gym sessions and Mentir is a song that has been in that list for a while.

Version 3.0 does not start as well as Dangereuse Attraction, although the first two tracks are still pretty good. However track three C’est Moi descends into a realm of pop music with which I’m not really very comfortable – Cher-style voice screwery and other electro-effects – nothing horrific but enough to turn me off. Track four Garde Tes Larmes “Keep your tears” starts off in much the same vein although quickly improves with a chorus that is amongst the best on the album.

Next up is what I consider to be the strongest song on the album Secrets. It then all cruises along until Plaisirs Amers where we once again have to listen to voice-fiddling but this is balanced out with hints of some heavier guitar riffs which come excitingly close to leaning towards the metal that I often go into dark corners to listen to.

Rebâtir Notre Histoire is probably the weakest song. It starts pretty badly then tries to improve but then gives up.

The album finishes with the English language song Do You – half rock, half dance – decent enough but essentially just more of the same. This is, for me, the biggest problem with the album. Although perfectly solid with a very fine singer and some decent tracks, everything’s a little samey whereas I felt that Dangereuse Attraction had far more variety and interest.

What I did find that day that did get under my skin was a group called Les Gars Dans L’Coin (The guys in the corner). Having listened several times now to The Radioactive Beets Show and to their #8604 EP, I am a very big fan.

A couple of weeks before that I had discovered, just in time, thanks to the invisible hand of the God of Ska, that Babylon Circus were playing London on October 26th, a gig which turned out to be so good that I went to see them again the following Saturday in Bristol.

Take a look at some of these photos of the guys on tour and tell me you don’t want to see them live!

Which leads quite smoothly into the fact that I’m currently working on something of an epic post which is taking much longer than expected. Regular readers may have noticed a half-cocked post called “Eight things that make a great live band” appeared accidentally on Sunday night. I have since revised the title to the 12.5% more exciting “Nine things that make a great live band” and hopefully I’ll be publishing it either tomorrow or Thursday.

Listen to the extracts above and consider getting a copy of The Radioactive Beets Show – it’s absurdly good value at £4.99 from the Amazon MP3 store which, as I’ve mentioned before, integrates flawlessly with your iTunes library if necessary.

Here are the links to the band’s pages on Facebook and Myspace.

My cousin also came with me to this gig and as neither she nor my girlfriend speak French, have any interest at all in French music, and are at best sceptical about my taste in music, I was praying that the show would be fantastic.

One track from their 2009 album, Le Belle Étoile has recently become available on the UK store. This is one of my favourites from the album, and the track with which the band opened.

The support act had been a female-fronted rock band whose name I still do not know but intend to find out. Update: the support band was iCON Smash My Box! I thought they did a fine job and they sounded different enough from the all-to-common stock rock of our times to make me want to hear more. What’s more is that we knew from their performance that the sound in the room was great.

As the multitude of Babylon Circus band members squeezed onto the stage and launched in Perdu there was no doubt that this was going to be something special. Much as I have always rated their albums, particularly their latest release, the recorded tracks are yet overshadowed by how well the band look, perform and sound on stage. How on Earth do you get ten musicians sounding so great together without a conductor? I can only assume that enormous credit has to go to the sound technicians. I have seen truly great bands reduced to a total mess on stage due to bad sound levels and/or acoustics.

The lead singer, who through energy-induced necessity had been rendered topless by the end of the night addressed the crowd in English while trying to whip us all up into a bunch of bouncing madmen and madwomen. I imagine this was one of the smaller crowds they will have played to this year but I think we held our own. Certainly there were very few people just standing back in mute appreciation. My girlfriend and I made our way through three bottles of red wine during the show and I am not entirely sure what work of witchcraft has managed to see me feeling fine today after the thorough shaking to which my guts were subjected.

Following Perdu were two songs that I have previously translated on this site, De la musique et du bruit and J’aurais bien voulu, both from the 2004 album Dances of Resistance. I had great confidence that my two companions for the night would enjoy most of the stuff from La Belle Étoile, but was less sure about their earlier music which was much more ska/reggae based, and much more revendicatif as I believe the French say. I needn’t have worried because, as I mentioned at the beginning of this blog entry, it was after De la musique et du bruit that I was relieved to hear the words “Oh my God, they’re really good.”

This is certainly a band whose live performance depends very much on the crowd getting on its feet and losing itself in the music.

I’ve always been a bouncer. A few pints and the arrival of Nightboat to Cairo at a friend’s birthday bash on Saturday night had been enough to make my night. Multiply that by some enormous number and that’s how I felt at The Jazz Café yesterday. Oh my God, they really were really good!

Two encores were not enough!

The first was the monkey album. The second is an album from 2007 called The Radioactive Beets Show by Les Gars Dans L’coin. You can listen to extracts from this album as well as extracts from their 2009 EP #8604 by using the widget to the left. I particularly recommend tasting the five tracks on #8604.

You’ll notice that the widget highlights most of the tracks from the first album as having explicit lyrics. I’m not quite sure about this, but I’ll take a closer listen and perhaps translate one of the tracks here at some point to see if we can find out what they’re getting at.

As an aside, it’s interesting to note that France provides all you can eat in terms of ska but if you are looking for French-language rock then you’ll generally have more luck looking towards Quebec.

I am currently searching from some new, inspiring rock band but am having little luck – indeed it was while searching for something with a bit of meat that I stumbled across these guys, and although not quite what I was looking for, I’m very glad I did, and there is enough distorted guitar to keep the cravings in check.

The Radioactive Beets Show and #8604 both merit a good listening. Oh, and did I mention that The Radioactive Beets Show can be picked up for 4.99 GBP on Amazon? I certainly don’t remember the last time I got as much bang for my buck, and the ink’s only two years dry on the album sleeve.

And now I should now start thinking about another translation for the next post.