Le Volume Courbe – “I Killed My Best Friend ” – [Honest Jon's]

he title sets the tone for an amazingly confessional album,
and the vinyl delivers. Much will be made of her Bloody
co-pilot, Kevin Shields, but Charlotte Marionneau is the one
flying in the clouds sans wings, sans prayers. The vocals
are pillowy hallucinations, triple-tracked and hazy with a
criminally subliminal vibe. The volume often curves down
with its hair hanging in its face, half of the lp features
Charlotte whispering teases to an acoustic guitar. Happy
blues, like “Sitting In Your Head” or cute clueless killer
like the title cut. Nice production touches in the shadows
between sounds, and the overlapping voices do raise the
delirium a tipsy notch. Is a French woman singing in English
still a chanteuse? She does try on other clothes besides
vagabond, folk-gazer/drifter. Piano cha-cha for Nina Simone’s
“Ain’t Got No…” Then with “Who Are You” Charlotte gets
stuck in a squelchy sample squeezer, similar to its sister,
on the great gaspy “The Mind Is A Horse.” “Hanging Around”
has a silliness that overcomes the dorkiness of the initial
synth loopy line. The closer “Locarno” lands on a darker,
dubbier side of the Moondog, when she sings “He scares me,
he’s beautiful” I’m more afraid for “him” whoever he is.
-Thurston Hunger