An arc shoots through the heart of Caroline Moreau's second album, uniting heartbreak, obsession and fleeting nonchalance with a deliciously black humour. The result is a decidedly mature and three-dimensional song collection. Moreau's palette, though rooted in the French chanson tradition, defies ready classification. She boldly reinterprets Piaf's Je ne regrette rien, deflates Brel's Ne me quitte pas of its excessive melodrama, and shimmies alongside Piazzolla's Oblivion with whispered intimacies. Moreau is more restrained in her vocals than on her 2005 debut, Paris Is Burning; her subtlety of interpretation is matched by a dazzling mix of musicians. Ariel Hernandez, Dermot Dunne, Lucas Gonzalez and Malachy Robinson (all members of the late, lamented Lunfardia) and Piazzolla veteran Ken Rice on violin stitch magical shapes around Moreau's intricate vocals, with Robinson's viola de gamba lending a startlingly austere backdrop to Les filles de Lorient. carolinemoreau.com
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