Out of the Garage

I’m sorry to report that the Nouvelle Vague music I bought and wrote about a few posts back is not great. Of course I didn’t trust the Guardian review, but I liked the idea of the project enough to risk ten bucks on it.

And I like it okay as background music, but I think ultimately it is more of a novelty record than art that stands on its own. Most of the songs are pleasant. A few, like Guns of Brixton or PiL's This is not a Love Song are pretty good. The Cure's A Forest would be excellent if they would have abstained from ruining it with creatures of the forest noises. A couple, like Depeche Mode’s I just can"t get enough, are simply irritating. The Dead Kennedys’ Too Drunk to Fuck is the only one that feels like total Kitsch.

In general, it’s not the songs that keep Nouvelle Vague from being good, nor is it the vocals which are generally very well done. The music has no life at all. It sounds like it was created in Garage Band, just a bunch of loops with the all too occasional sound effect. There is not a hint of either depth or innovation.

It didn’t help that I actually went out and saw live music last night that featured a few real Brazilian musicians. Angelique Kidjo was at Celebrate Brooklyn and put on a great show. The crowd was one of the best I’ve ever been in at the Prospect Park bandshell and Angelique was able to pull off one of the best crowd sing-alongs I’ve ever seen. The band was hot and they played a variety of music from African Souskous to Salsa and Brazilian music to Jimmy Hendrix.

The Garage Band compositions from Nouvelle Vague sounded listless before I saw the concert After an hour or so of real Brazilians (and others) playing real instruments those pre-packaged Nouvelle Vague songs sounded distressingly lifeless.