L'Incroyable Verite

Sébastien Tellier has does not quite sound like AIR, though, perhaps if AIR were one guy and had a power failure, they may sound a bit like this. Maybe. Sébastian Tellier sounds less like AIR and more like Syd Barrett. He looks like more like a magician than a musician.

Oh Malheur chez O'Malley - A French O'Malley's Bar? Nick Cave already sent someone into blow the place to smithereens in his much-adored Murder Ballads. I suppose Mr. Tellier has shown us what it felt like for the tables and chairs to witness such a thing.

Kazoo III - Are we to believe there is, somewhere up Mr. Tellier's sleeve, a Kazoo I and a Kazoo II? This song has soft strumming of an acoustic guitar and something that sounds like it is not a kazoo, and murmured lyrics, like a man drowning but singing on his way down.

Universe - Somehow, this sounds like a muffled Beatles song, maybe like a slow Beatles song from, say, Revolver (were there any slow ones on that?) muffled by the vast expanse of space. Imagine it out there, coming from nowhere and you can't quite make it out because your space helmut is on too tight. Then again, a lot of French sounds like that.

L'enfance d'un chien - The kids of a dog? My French is pretty useless and I'm sure I am wrong, but that's what it looks like to me. Pretty song though.

Une vie de papa - Piano, bass, squeaky toy all march along to a man off in the distance (he sounds like he might be outside the CD) whistles, presumably for his dog.

Fin chien - Fast paced, slapping piano like a ragtime saloon, only spookier. Like a saloon piano in a forgotten ghostown playing for the tumbleweeds as they roll by in heaps of dust and dirt.

Grec- Birds chirping happily to an acoustic guitar.

Kissed by you - His singing is quite in the forefront on this one, though, the way it's delivered makes it feel like a distant childhood memory, though, not your own childhood. Someone else's. Then the guitars get all crazy and there is no telling whom you grew into.

Fantino - I love this song, I love my name, I love the name of this song. It's like a dreamy lullaby. Kooky organ, acoustic guitar, therimin, perhaps even a sitar (??) I dunno. It makes me think of a distant land, where the leaves are green, and the trees are thick, and one hundred thousand miniature Fantini run amok picking berries and cracking nuts.

Trilogie femme - All while this song, split into three parts, is playing there is a slow, creaky rocking chair crunching to and fro, to and fro. Then a group of back up singers show up from some other record, like they drifted in one a raft sent out from Burt Bacharach's good ship lollipop, then, they leave just as quickly as they came, a single chime chinks as a mournful voice mourns something or other. During my first listen I was convinced this would be one of the better CD's out there to fall asleep to, and, I was mostly right, except, on the third part of Trilogie femme, somebody or something screams terribly loud, it brings to mind Blixa Bargeld's vocal-screeching, tonsil bursting, hair-raising "howl" at the end of Negativ Nein. It's kinda like that.

Black douleur - I think he is singing in English, I'm almost sure of it. This last number sounds like it belongs on somebody else's album, it's got horns and linear ideas, and well, I dunno what to make of it. Not a clue.

Overall, it's a very strange, hypnotic, psychedelique record. I think I can recommend it to those who are brave. Sébastien Tellier says "You should listen to my album alone by candlelight." I haven't tried that yet.