As you can see, top right, Eiffel’s 2007 Album Tandoori is one of my Top 10 French language albums of the last five years.

Their latest release, A Tout Moment, released in October this year is contained within the Amazon widget to the left. I’ve just bought this album today and as I write this have not yet listened to it – this is today’s motivation to get to the gym. A treadmill full of Eiffel awaits me once I’ve published this post. Or should that be “an Eiffel of treadmill?”.

UPDATE: I’ve had my first listen to the album and there are a two or three tracks that sound great – in particular there is some blinding drumming and some truly dramatic sections of the film soundtrack kind. The clean guitar on Mort J’Appelle put me in mind of the acoustic sections that intersperse W.A.S.P.’s The Crimson Idol, an album which is one of my guilty pleasures and is currently coming nostalgically through my computer’s speakers. God, I’d forgotten how much I loved that damn album. When it finishes I am going to listen to Eiffel’s offering again and see if I can’t write a readable review.

The song I am going to translate here is A Tout Moment La Rue which you can listen to in its entirety online on their website where you can also find the lyrics.

We find another left-wing reference à la this song. Thanks to the community at the Word Reference Forums I now know that the “trois cent familles” is a reference to the concept that a small number of privileged and wealthy families are running the country.

We have a problem in the translation. Avoir pignon sur rue means to be well-established. In the lyric “ces trois cent familles qui sur la rue ont pignon à tout moment elle peut aussi dire non” the “elle” refers to “la rue” so we have to keep the word street in the translation of the expression. Which frankly isn’t possible so the translation is rather a hack. Ideas welcome.

I mentioned a couple of days ago that there was a song on the album Tandoori by Eiffel that takes its name from the same place as La Ruda’s Paris En Bouteille.

The French expression is Avec des si on mettrait Paris en bouteille. A reasonable English equivalent, as mentioned previously would be “if wishes were horses, then beggars would ride”, although I tend to express the same sentiment with the blunter “If my aunt had a **** she’d be my uncle”.

As was the case with Paris en Bouteille, the song contains references to several other French expressions such as mettre dans le mille – “to hit the bull’s eye”, and ce n’est pas la mer à boire – “it’s no big deal”.

Tandoori isn’t one of my favourite albums but there are a few really good songs. My favourite track is probably Bigger than the biggest, which I’m sure I’ll get round to translating quite soon. A couple of other choice songs are Qu’ai-je donc à donner ? and the title track itself, Tandoori.

From the last paragraph, the references to Charybde en Scylla, I have come to learn, refer to two sea-monsters (in English Charybdis to Scylla), who, in Greek Mythology, occupied two sides of a strait. Due to their close proximity, when sailors tried to move away from one, they moved too close to the other. From this originates the phrases “between Scylla and Charybdis”, “between the rock and the whirlpool”, and also probably “between a rock and a hard place”. All you can eat on this subject is here and here.