My Top 100 Albums: #70 - Margaux Avril, ‘Instantanés’


70.

Margaux Avril, ‘Instantanés’

Capitol, 2013


Probably the most left-field inclusion on this list so far, Instantanés is the début, and only, LP from little-known Franco-American singer-songwriter Margaux (Avril) de Fouchier. I discovered Margaux shortly after this album’s release through her stripped-down performances of La Claque and Lunatique on the YouTube channel of France-based music site 3ème Gauche. Such was the vocal and songwriting talent on display, I believed that I’d stumbled across a future global popstar-in-the-making. But it’s difficult to break through into the pop mainstream, especially as a French-language vocalist, and all that Avril lacked was perhaps the attention-grabbing innovation and eccentricity of her successful francophone contemporaries such as Christine and the Queens and Stromae. In all other ways, Instantanés is nothing short of an indie-pop masterclass: a blueprint for contemporary catchy, yet sensitive, vocal music. The production throughout is pared-back but precise, leaving as much room as possible for Margaux’s ethereal, melismatic vocal melodies to shine and her potent lyrics to punch through with a clarity that is somewhat uncharacteristic of French chanson. On Lunatique she evokes in her poetic style a Jekyll-and-Hyde-type monster from love and desire: ‘[I love you in the daytime, but what about the night?/Your alter ego, your desires/…The mask falls and you flee]’.* Here she highlights the dichotomy that forms the spine of the album - the two sides to love: on the one hand, being totally bound to someone and needing them like “oxygen”; on the other, having to witness the worst of someone, like “touching the Sun”. The lyrics’ metaphors throughout the album evoke this binary: day and night; rain and clear skies; passenger and conductor; hope and despair. Instantanés may not have launched Margaux Avril to stardom, but as an isolated project it remains, for me, a compelling hidden gem.

Hidden Highlight: Paris

*Translations are my own

 
  1. La Claque

  2. Oxygène

  3. L’Air De Rien

  4. C’Était La Nuit

  5. Lunatique

  6. Insatisfaite

  7. Toucher Le Soleil

  8. Côté Passager

  9. Paris

  10. Encore Une Histoire

  11. L’Espoir

 

See the full list so far here:


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My Top 100 Albums: #71 - The Stone Roses, ‘The Stone Roses’