y va pas partout y marche pas au soda

I'm a well known sucker for Gallic pop, so without further ado, here's the best track from Vanessa Paradis' new album, which has dominated the French charts for the last couple of months:



It's not a bad album, not up there with Variations Sur Le Meme T'Aime, and certainly no contest with Charlotte Gainsbourg's 5:55 for my favourite French album in recent years, but worth a listen.

there is only feeling in this world of love and death

Erol Alkan has been behind much that I have enjoyed over the last couple of years; his Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve Monkees remix was my track of 2005; I also liked his Franz Ferdinand remix on the 2006 Rough Trade compilation, and his own Bugged In selection, which introduced me to Passing Through by Rare Bird as well as the Concretes' version of the Stones' Miss You (and which was possibly playing in the background if you've drank coffee chez Tan Ward in the last two years).
He did a 6 Mix for BBC 6 Music last month, which is now available as a podcast at www.erolalkan.co.uk and on itunes. I love the Broadcast track; I will have to look out more of their stuff. From the obscure - Holger Czukay, Wobble, Liebezeit to the better known - Madness and Glen Campbell - this works really well.

our three weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope..

Just when I found something nice to say about the Roman Catholic church, Mad Priest tells me this.
I love the quote from lapinbizarre

"He wasn't a Nazi, he was just a Bavarian Catholic"

it's that look in your eyes, telling me lies

Recent purchases include: Comicopera - Robert Wyatt has certainly been one of my artists of the year. This is a beautiful album - Just As You Are is just as honest a love song as Sea Song, and very likely to sit alongside Becky Unthank on my end of year pick.
Late Night Tales - Fat Boy Slim. One of the best compilations you will hear in a while - some great funk, dub, and general freakiness (including Kenny Roger's stoner track from the Big Lebowski, and Kraftwerk in a Northern Soul style - inspired). Even some Charlie Brown Music. And mentioning Kraftwerk, both the Hot Chip remixes of a couple of the Tour de France tracks, and the soundtrack to Control (which includes Autobahn) are worth a listen.
The Very Best of Ethiopiques - worth it for the Mulatu Astatke tracks alone. I've wanted to get hold of his stuff since watching Broken Flowers.
Lots of Alabama 3 - MOR is growing on me, especially since seeing them live yet again (and the Astoria have just emailed me to let me know that they found the wallet I lost at the gig), but I'm also enjoying the gig only Drive Time remix, and a bootleg of the Cambridge acoustic set (here's another sad song...).
I'm looking forward to the Robert Plant and Alison Krauss album released next week, and I should also get hold of the new Teddy Thompson, which Tom is raving about.
And here's Bill Bailey restored:

To provide meaningful architecture is not to parody history but to articulate it

I've just come back from three days in Berlin, where I was able to find time before coming home to visit the Jüdisches Museum. Having seen an excellent documentary about the architect Daniel Libeskind on BBC Four last week (still available for download) and with the museum itself featured in the Guardian's Great Modern Buildings series, it was a building and a museum that I very much wanted to visit. It didn't disappoint - whilst the design is deliberately disorienting, particularly with the entrance through the intersecting axes of Holocaust, Exile and Continuity, the wonderful use of space and light means this complements rather than detracts from the museum's main collection. Highly recommended.


I've also noted that the Vatican is tomorrow, at the behest of a German Pope, beatifying Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian peasant who refused to fight for the Third Reich in an unjust war. He knew that the penalty was death. An inspiring story.


Finally, a quick plug for Of Course, I Could Be Wrong. The Mad Priest is one of the more entertaining bloggers I've read in recent months (and the man does have a very good taste in music). I just wonder, given the frequency with which he posts, how much his parishioners actually see him.