Yesterday I pointed you in the direction of the new release from Vulgaires Machins, an album of eleven acoustic songs, available for the donation of your choice from their website.

I’ve listened to the album half a dozen times since downloading it and I love it – I don’t need to review it for you – download a copy and check it out for yourself.

Here is a translation of “A”, originally released on the 2006 album “Aimer Le Mal” which you can sample using the Amazon widget on the right.

I don’t know what “cady” means – the best I can discover is that it is a make of motorbike. If you know, please share.

You could do worse things right now than pay a visit to the Boutique area of the Vulgaires Machins website.

Today the band released an eleven-track acoustic album which they are allowing you to download for whatever price you would like to pay.

This includes the ability to download for free in exchange for your email address.

I can’t provide a review yet or any translations as I have only this minute finished downloading it myself and am currently listening to the second track.

Suffice it to say that Vulgaires Machins are one of my favourite francophone rock bands and I highly recommend that you get a copy of this album.

I had been looking forward to Ycare’s second album, Lumière Noire for several months. His first album, Au Bord Du Monde is a great record and I had expected more of the same from his follow up, released on June 6th.

On first listen, I was disappointed. Au Bord Du Monde was loaded with clean guitars and had a very acoustic feel. The latest release has veered more towards being a pop album, with much more keyboard effects and with a much more poppy, dancey feel.

However, the whole album has grown on me after several listens and while I don’t think it will ever overtake his first offering as one of my favourite albums, it will certainly get many plays.

Here is a translation of the second track, Lap Dance, a single that was released some time before the album itself.

Incry’s first album, Face au Mur, is one of the heavier, and better, rock albums to be released recently in the French language. Incry produce what you might call a heavy, melodic rock which hits me right where I live, although I realise this may be slightly heavier than most people stumbling across this page may be looking for.

There’s no real need to to make comparisons to other bands, but if I had to I would say the band they put me most in mind of is Staind. The first track is very Faith No More-ish in many ways but just listen to the samples in the widget to the right of this page to get a feel for the album.

Here is a translation of the third track, L’effaceur – a word which translates as “Eraser”, just as the Arnie film of the same name was translated to L’effaceur in French.

I’m off to the gym to try to cycle another 12 miles on one of those evil bikes.

Hopefully my mind will be somewhat distracted from the grim reality of my lack of fitness by La Ruda’s new album, Odéon 1014, which I have just picked up from the Amazon MP3 store, which, happily was £2 cheaper than on iTunes.

I’ve not heard any samples from this album yet, which you can do now by using the widget to the right, but given La Ruda’s track record I’m not expecting to be disappointed.

All going well, the next post will be brief review and a translation of at least one of the songs.

Update: The stand out track for me on this album (and by some way) is track nine “1982.”

To celebrate the fantastic new album from Mademoiselle K, here is another translation from it.

Having listened to this album fairly solidly for the last few days, I think it’s my favourite release since Babylon Circus’s La Belle Étoile.

The song translated here is the title track Jouer Dehors, the vampiric video for which can be viewed here.

I’m a lot happier with this translation than the last one, because these lyrics make a lot more sense.

A week late, I’d forgotten about the release of Mademoiselle K’s latest album, Jouer Dehors (Playing Outside), on January 14th.

I picked it up today from the Amazon MP3 store, and I can tell you that it’s a real good’un. A bit less rocky and a bit less punky than the previous two albums, a bit cleaner, a bit more melodic, and altogether very enjoyable from the very first listen.

Some standout tracks for me, are “La Corde” – the build up in the chorus is so satisfying (as it is with the final track “À L’infini”), “Solidaires”, and the title track, the video for which you can watch the video for the title track at this link.

While I absolutely loved the first few tracks on Ça Me Vexe (some of the best French rock I’ve heard), I was never totally grabbed by Jamais La Paix, and thought the next album might be quite empty. I was wrong. The album sounds crisp, well produced and stays solid until the very end. Highly recommended.

So, en deux temps, trois mouvements, I thought I would put up a translation of the opening track, Aisément.

I’ll be honest (I’m a very honest man), I’m not overly pleased with this translation, I not actually sure what she’s going on about.

Feel free to let me know where I’ve screwed up.

Ben L'Oncle Soul, December 2010
Le Pigalle Club, Piccadilly

On Friday I had no idea that Ben L’Oncle Soul was due to appear alongside Puggy in London last night. I only found out thanks to a competition on French Radio London.

I was beyond excited to be going to see this guy live.

I’ve been a huge fan since seeing him back in May, on TV5 Monde when I was massively impressed by his style, music and performance.

Not only was he every bit as good as I thought he would be, putting on a superb show with his band and his support vocalists/dancers, The Soul Wash Boys, I also discovered a truly great band in Puggy and a fantastic music venue, Le Pigalle Club, in the heart of Piccadilly.

We were treated to English versions of many of the French tracks from his self-titled first album released earlier this year, including this one, Petite Soeur, although I should mention that this is not the version sung last night – as mentioned many times before, the translations here are not designed to be sung, they’re there to help understand the original.

BB Brunes premier EP en anglais was released on November 15th and if you listen to the extracts on their album preview page – after listening to the really rather good sounding acoustic version of Battle Lost and Won – you will notice that track four So far so long is in fact Lalalove you from their current album Nico Teen Love, their deuxième album en français.

Only the music is shared however, the English lyrics have been rewritten and have no link to the original track.

I’ve not heard this new album yet because as far as I can tell there is no where to buy it on MP3 online and I’m long past wishing to build up a physical CD collection, let alone a vinyl collection, which is another format option availble in the BB Brunes store.

Here is the translation of the track Lalalove You from Nico Teen Love.

Today sees the launch of French Radio London which is aimed at the 400,000 strong community of francophones living in London.

As it is close to impossible to find a French radio station that plays anything other than a majority of anglophone music, I will be interested to hear the percentage of French speaking music played by FRL.

Switching on for the first time to Caroline Bodin’s show, the first track I heard was the very English “What The World Is Waiting For” by The Stone Roses, which was followed by “Le jardin d’hiver” by Henri Salvador. Not exactly my cup of tea, but things quickly improved with the very fine “San Francisco” by Maxime Le Forestier.

While early indications of the diversity of music is encouraging, we’ll have to wait and see what we get in terms of the variety of songs from the francophone world – let’s hope we get to hear some great French rock, ska, reggae, and all the genres within which we know Great French Songs can be found!

The station is available only on DAB in London or via the Internet so this unfortunately rules out listening in the car for most of us Londoners which means that, for those wishing to use it as a route to finding French music, the station will need to distinguish itself from the French stations freely available online or via applications such as iTunes.

I’ll be listening with an open mind for the next few days and weeks and hopefully I will be able to report that we have a great new addition to the London airwaves.