Tag: Laure Briard En Voo EP

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstay Laure Briard Shares ’70s-Inspired “The Smell of Your Hair”

Laure Briard is a Toulouse, France-based singer/songwriter, who has a had a highly uncommon path to professional music. Briard bounced around several different interests and passions for some time: She studied literature and criminology and even acted a bit, before concentrating on music full-time in 2013.

After the release of her debut EP, 2013’s Laure Briard chante la France, Briard met Juilen Gasc and Eddy Cramps, and the trio began working on the material that would eventually become her full-length debut, 2015’s Révélation. Inspired by Françoise Hardy, Margo Guryan and Vashti Bunyan, Révélation featured modern and poetic lyricism. 

Briard then signed with Midnight Special Records, who released her sophomore album, 2016’s Sur la Piste de Danse. Repeated trips to Brazil inspired and informed her next three efforts –2018’s Coração Louco EP, 2019’s Un peu plus d’amour s’il vous plâit and 2021’s En Voo EP, which were heavily indebted to Bossa Nova and saw the Toulouse-based artist writing and singing lyrics in Brazilian Portuguese and French. Those three efforts were rooted in a successful series of collaborations between the Toulouse-based JOVM mainstay, the equally acclaimed JOVM mainstays,  Latin Grammy Award nominated, Brazilian psych rockers Boogarins, Marius Dufflot, and her longtime collaborators Vincent “Octopus” Guyot

The JOVM mainstay’s fourth album Ne pas trop rester bleue is slated for a February 10, 2023 release through Midnight Special Records. Inspired and informed by Joshua Tree, a remote national park that’s a no man’s land, where space and time seem to stretch on forever. An odd fantasy land, where America’s simultaneously obsolete and haunted by its myths and past legends. But ultimately, the album celebrates rebirth and letting go.

Although Ne pas trop rester bleue took three long years to finish, the album was enriched and informed by her travels, and as a result, the effort was liberating. Reportedly much lighter and more optimistic than Sur la piste de dance, an album rooted in broken destinies, disillusionments and heartbreaks, Ne pas trop rester bleue is a cathartic, deeply autobiographical effort that allows the Toulouse-based JOVM mainstay to essentially free herself from lingering ghosts — and to conjure new ones.

The album’s material is influenced quite a bit by the legendary Carole King, Lee Hazlwood, the poet Don Gibson and Bobbie Gentry. Briard continues her ongoing collaboration with Julien Gasc and Vincent “Octopus” Guyot, who assisted in the material’s arrangements. Sonically, the result is an album that draws from soul, pop and country featuring string and brass arrangements paired with the JOVM mainstay’s breezy delivery.

Featuring twinkling keys, brooding and shimmering strings and soulful brass arrangements paired with Briard’s coquettish delivery, Ne pas trop rester bleue‘s latest single “The Smell of Your Hair” sounds as though it could have been a unreleased track from the Tapestry sessions that was cut from the album. And much like Tapestry, “The Smell of Your Hair” tells a story about a heartbreaking encounter — but in this case, with a lonesome cowboy type in Joshua Tree, where fleeting passion under the desert sun was lulled by birdsong and the sound of wind. And instead of lamenting over the inevitable separation and giving into bitterness, heartbreak or even melodrama, the song’s narrator attempts to turn heartbreak into a playfully sunny and sensual memory.

Directed by Benjamin Marius Petit, the accompanying video for “The Smell of Your Hair” features Briard and her band playing in a full, behind-the-scenes styled visual. Fittingly, Briard and band are in ’70s-inspired costumes, playing in a ’70s-styled white box studio. Shot from four different camera perspectives, the clip utilizes diverse image styles and distortion effects (wide angle, fisheye, 360 tracking…), evoking “a psychedelic LSD trip in Woodstock, but also a mixing of eras, with visual references that could belong at once to the 70’s and to contemporary times,” explains the director Benjamin Marius Petit. “The goal was not to make a strictly ‘retro’ clip but, to best reflect the atmosphere of Laure’s music, to keep one foot in the past and the other in the present.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: French Singer-Songwriter Laure Briard Releases a Breezy and Bittersweet New Single

Throughout the course of last year, I wrote a bit about the rising Toulouse, France-based singer/songwriter Laure Briard. Briard has had an uncommon path to professional music: the French singer/songwriter bounced around several different interests and passions, including studying literature and criminology, and even doing a bit of acting before concentrating on music full-time on music back in 2013.

The Toulouse-based singer/songwriter initially signed with Tricatel Records, who released her debut EP. After the EP’s release, Briard met with Juilen Gasc and Eddy Cramps and began working on what would become her attention grabbing full-length debut, 2015’s Révélation, an effort inspired by Françoise Hardy, Margo Guryan and Vashti Bunyan that featured a very modern and poetic lyricism. She then signed with Midnight Special Records, who released her sophomore album, 2016’s Sur la Piste de Danse.

Since Sur la Pisa de Danse, Briard’s work has increasingly been influenced by Bossa nova: 2018’s Coração Louco, featured lyrics written and sung in Portuguese — and a guest spot from acclaimed Brazilian JOVM mainstays and Latin Grammy Award nominated act Boogarins. 2019’s Un peu plus d’amour s’il vous plâit, which was released through Michel Records in Canada, Midnight Special Records in Europe and Burger Records here in the States continued Briard’s ongoing love affair with Bossa nova and Brazilian music.

Slated for a February 19, 2021 through Michel Records in North America, Dinosaur City Records in Australia and Midnight Special Records in Europe, the Toulouse-based singer/songwriter’s forthcoming EP En Voo sees Briard continuing her successful collaboration with Boogarins, as well as with her longtime collaborators Vincent Guyot, a.k.a. Octopus and Marius Duflot. If you were frequenting this site over the course of last year, you may recall that I wrote about En VOO’s first single, EP title track “En Voo,” 60s Scott Walker-like orchestral psych pop meets 70s AM radio rock-like take on Bossa nova, featuring Briard’s ethereal vocals cooing in Portuguese, twinkling Rhodes, shimmering guitars and jazz-fusion that evokes the swooning euphoria of reuniting with a long-lost love.

“Supertrama,” En Voo’s second and latest single continues in a similar vein as its predecessor: 60s Scott Walker-like orchestral psych pop meets 70s AM rock featuring twinkling piano, shuffling jazz-like drumming, a sinuous bass line, a regal horn arrangement, angular bursts of guitar and a soaring hook within an expansive yet breezy song arrangement. But just underneath the breezy surface, the song evokes a familiar bittersweet ache. The track can trace its origins to a piano melody that Briard wrote in France. She then took the track too Brazilian musician and composer Giovanni Cidreira, who helped write the song’s lyrics. The track, along with the rest of the EP was recorded in São Paulo-based Dissenso Studio with Boogarins as her backing band.

“I met Giovani through the Boogarins, who he both collaborates and shares a friendship with,” Briard says of her collaboration with Cidreira. “I admire Giovani’s voice, his words, his stories, and the possibility of working with him one day quickly became a reality. Once I’d written the melody of ‘Supertrama,’ I took the plunge and asked Giovani if he would write the lyrics with me. He took the melody and wrote lyrics which don’t quite tell a story, but rather feelings, impressions, and memories. Just like the rest of the EP, the arrangements were made in real time in the studio. Pieuvre Convex was responsible for the final modulation of the track – he’s a king in that area!”