Coeur de Pirate

Will Hutchins writing for I V Y paris

While the US and UK music scenes are currently awash with 80’s infatuated 20 year old girls playing synth and power pop, such as La Roux, Little Boots, Ladyhawke, Lissy Trullie etc. etc. etc., the girls singing in the language of Proust are going without the shoulder pads and keeping to rather more organic, new folk and pop sounds.

Recent (rather wonderful) releases from ‘Hexagon’ chanteuses Emily Loizeau and Olivia Ruiz may not contain the DeLorean driven force that the songs of their English speaking Stevie Nicks and Human League obsessed counterparts boast, but they achieve in writing enchanting pop ‘chansons’ and encompass a more interesting breadth of instruments. One wouldn’t put these two in exactly the same musical box though, as the music of the elegant Loizeau is perhaps more ‘mature’ and folk sounding whilst the pint-sized Ruiz’s bubbles with youthful energy.

They are both seemingly fans of Regina Spektor however, and in this similarity can now be joined by 18 year-old Montreal native Béatrice Martin, otherwise known as Coeur de Pirate. Her piano led soft pop songs have a Spektor-like thread running through them in the manner of Kate Nash’s first record, except self-titled debut album ‘Coeur de Pirate’ is much more sincere and delicate, not to mention considerably less irritating, than Nash’s chart conquering ‘Made of Bricks’.

The charming lead-off single ‘Comme des enfants’ floats like a child’s toy boat bobbing from one side of a pond to another on a fine spring Sunday, then with the swell of strings and a chorus of backing vocals it rises and glides off into the air like a dandelion at the end of the same sun splashed afternoon.

It is stupidly quaint similes like this that Coeur de Pirate’s music conjures in my head but unlike my previous similes her music is never cheesy, it is rather a joyous and playful quaintness that on further plays becomes a subtle and understated beauty.

On first appearances the diminutive blonde Martin looks like the perfect match for her delicate music, but when the little Quebecoise rolls up her sleeves to reveal her heavily tattooed arms, one understands that there’s more depth and dimension to the artist and her work than previously realized. A depth that has no need to be filled with 80’s revivalist gimmicks in order to make its creator a relevant member of the young female singer/songwriter crowd.

COEUR DE PIRATE BRINGS HER LIVE SHOW TO LA BOULE NOIRE ON THE 13TH, 14TH, 15TH, AND 16TH OF MAY.

La Boule Noire
120 boulevard Rochechouart
75018 Paris