Zita Swoon
A Song About A Girls

THE REVIEW

In the beginning, only a woman's voice seems to give the "la" to the instruments. The double bass starts, then the piano. That's how A Song About A Girls (intentionally ungrammatical title) begins, the new effort from the eclectic Stef Kamil Carlens and his Zita Swoon.

Just to remind us that he is always our trusted storyteller, in the opening track SKC brings out an old acquaintance of ours, Josie, the protagonist of many of his compositions. Me & Josie On A Saturday Night is a calm walk accompanied by piano, female choirs, and strings. A dreamy melody. Dreams indeed seem to be, along with women, a recurring theme within the album. Me & Josie is followed by Intrigue, a perfect French pop piece. Precisely: French. For the first time, SKC ventures into a language that is not English. As the story goes, our hero experimented with the Francophone thrill by composing a song for Arno, the hugely popular Belgian chansonnier, discovering that it wasn't at all unpleasant. A Song About A Girls features as many as four songs in French, and despite the language barrier, Intrigue is a tune that gets stuck in your head with extreme ease.

This album may be the band's simplest, personal and intimate, sober but not bare, alternating pieces with a decidedly French stamp, very successful ballads (Selfish Girl and 100), and delightful gems like Josiesomething. A special mention for Remember To Withhold, funky and engaging, the closing song and the Tom Waits-like note of the album.

A good album, pleasant and eccentric, entirely recorded at home, as the cover notes specify. It's a pity that it is not distributed in Italy, but we hope that the recent dates in our country have managed to unlock this situation.