Disco de Nouvelle Vague: “Nouvelle Vague [PA]”

Take classic post-punk songs, by bands like Joy Division, the Clash, the Cure, and the Dead Kennedys which. Now give them a new sound: bossa nova.

That's the particular gimmick of Nouvelle Vague, whose self-titled debut is an ironic little curiosity. And while it has pretty, tongue-in-cheek covers like a sultry "Love Will Tear Us Apart," it never really rises above the status of "ironic little curiosity."

It opens with the legendary Joy Division song, done to a trippy bossa nova sound, and backed by lifeguard whistles and waves crashing. Then it dips into a chipper cover of Depeche Mode's "Just Can't Get Enough," a rather plodding acoustic cover of the Clash's "Guns of Brixton," and a mildly engaging version of the Undertones' "Teenage Kicks."

There are sultrier numbers as well -- the Cure get a cover with sultry night noises and slow guitar in "A Forrest," and "Sisters of Mercy" is practically transcendental. But while I love the Dead Kennedys' "Too Drunk to F*ck," it doesn't translate well to an awkward bossa nova rhythm. It doesn't fit in, and is distractingly disjointed even when taken by itself.

Is "Nouvelle Vague" a pretty bossa nova covers album? Oh yes. Will it actually be listened to again? Hard to say. It's an interesting listen, but a novelty rather than an album in its own right.

Certainly Nouvelle Vague has excellent choice in retro rock music, since they chose several excellent groups to cover here, and often their best songs as well. Some are catchy, some are cutely sugary, some are ethereal ballads. They're pretty to listen to, but somehow the individual flavour of each song gets lost in the downtempo sound.

Whatever you think of the music, it can't be denied that Camille Dalmais has an exceptional voice. Except for that painful screech in "Too Drunk To F*ck," she veers between the breathiness of Hope Sandoval to the sultry croon of Beth Gibbons. With a hint of Bjork as well, to be honest.

In or out of Nouvelle Vague, Dalmais has enormous talent, while the rest of the album is merely "okay" or even "just good." Diverting, but not the sort of thing to listen to over and over.

This CD is based on an interesting premise. Take a social-political-music movement, "new wave", and interpret it through bossa nova (which also means "new wave," in Portuguese). The brash male vocals and stark instrumentation of the original songs yield to cool female vocals and more relaxed tempos. Yang becomes yin.

But this is not to say that the songs lose any of their power in the process. Rather, they gain new layers of complexity through the bossa nova interpretation. "Brixton," for example, is a real treat -- the singer spits out the lyrics with a combination of contempt, weariness, and exasperation not possible in the original.

Thinking of _Nouvelle Vague_ as either "new wave" or "bossa nova" is actually quite limiting. I would say this project, deliberately or inadvertently, has much in common with Brazil's Tropicalia movement, in terms of its global outlook and focus on social issues. In order to make the transition between genres, the artists metaphorically traverse the Atlantic numerous times, from the U.K. to America to Europe to Brazil. In the process, they demonstrate that the social and economic issues underlying new wave still resonate, even decades later, when placed in a new context.

If bossa nova hadn't so quickly become associated with cheese in the United States, (ex. "lounge,") I'm certain that more of Amazon's reviewers would have recognized this album as the intellectual endeavor that it is, rather than reading it as a handful of light, ironic new wave covers.

Look, it's pseudo bossa nova. 'Love Will Tear Us Apart,' 'Guns of Brixton,' and 'I Just Can't Get Enough' try HARD.

But the most gorgenous song on this album is 'In A Manner of Speaking.' Listen to any of the originals, and I guarantee you'll be impressed by the cover. It's gorgeous, intelligable, nonvibrato. It's wonderful.

You'll fall in love.

I've bought this CD and Bande à Part together and I'm pretty bored with them after listening to them a couple of times. Same rhythm, same voices, same type of music... it's really exhausting after a while. I just wish they would experience something new from time to time, not take a song and make it the same type of cover over and over again instead.

i think this is a great album and i didn't find it wore on me at all ... and "the guns of brixton" cover ROCKS! annie lennox should watch out: she is getting challenged for the "best clash cover of all time" crown.