Thursday 19 April 2007

indie crumpets: Francoise Hardy

The idea of an indie crumpets hit parade verges on a saddo FHM magazine thing. Actually no, fuck that. FHM is Huis Genoot for vapid meat-fed castle drinking mouth breathers. So there.

French girls wittering along about nothing in particular always gets me hot and bothered. They sound winsome, exotic and distant as another language, like a kid’s confused, blurred notion of sex and romance, years before girl meets boy. Innocent, with blunted stirrings of perviness. Like being nine, snooping and finding your friend’s hot mother’s silk stockings in a drawer. But I digress.

Francoise Hardy could sing about cleaning her stove and I’d still get all flustered. Not that I understand French. After two years of schoolboy French, all I can say is “la garçon monge la glaçe” (the boy eats the ice cream), which proved useless in asking directions to the musée Rodin in Paris.

Perhaps it’s just me, but her song “Comment Te Dire Adieu” indelibly puts me in mind of a black and white music video with my bulldog as Grace Kelly. No really- head scarf and Jackie O sunglasses, slo-mo gliding by in a red convertible. Listen and you’ll see it, I promise. Maybe. Sort of. Or not.