A Guide on Folk Music – Volume IV
Jauntily introducing itself,
Comme a la radio’s eponymous track immediately sets course for thirty-five minutes of sublimely melded Chanson and soulful free jazz. Vocalist Brigitte Fontaine coos and murmurs, the backing of The Art Ensemble of Chicago’s sometimes foreboding-sometimes gentle brand of musicianship adding to the wafting eroticism Fontaine’s spoken singing technique. Moving far away from the folkier elements of Chanson and into the darker, abstract dimensions that the Ensemble and new collaborator Areski Belkacem were well versed in,
Comme a la radio was Fontaine’s entry into the avant-garde wilderness, and into the French underground she’d be a major part of throughout the 1970s. Capturing both Fontaine and the Ensemble at their best, with the Ensemble releasing their seminal
Les stances a Sophie the same year as
Comme a la radio, Fontaine markedly caught the collective at their arguable peak.
Genuinely testing one’s patience and simultaneously challenging the listener, the minimalist production both enhanced the music and strengthened the connection between its audience and Fontaine’s music, achieving a level of intimacy often present in chanson, yet without the syrupy orchestral arrangements or the heavily-awkward sensuality regularly a part of the genre. Fontaine’s performance on the album, while immaculate, can easily be compared to the late Nico, with the cold, isolated emphasis put on her singing being a trait shared between the two singers. Many of the pieces on
Comme a la radio weave an atmosphere akin to that of being in a dark, smoky nightclub in Paris, with the listener either being gently serenaded or confronted with scattershot instrumentation that serve more as a mood-setting rather than a proper accompaniment with “L'été l'été” and “Tanka II” being quite guilty of this. However, the final cuts on the album, “Tanka I” and “Lettre a Monsieur le chef de gare de La Tour De Carol” recoup the lack of outstanding material from its second half with excellent musicianship that traverses between haunting and greatly hypnotic.
Comme a la radio ambitiously forges a relationship between the eroticism of chanson with the exotica of free jazz, and while not a perfect example of this union done right, it is one of the high watermarks of experimental music, whether the album falls in the folk category, jazz or pop.
