My Top 100 Albums: #70 - Margaux Avril, ‘Instantanés’
70.
Margaux Avril, ‘Instantanés’
Capitol, 2013
Probably the most left-field inclusion on this list so far, Instantanés is the début, and only, LP from little-known Franco-American singer-songwriter Margaux (Avril) de Fouchier. I discovered Margaux shortly after this album’s release through her stripped-down performances of La Claque and Lunatique on the YouTube channel of France-based music site 3ème Gauche. Such was the vocal and songwriting talent on display, I believed that I’d stumbled across a future global popstar-in-the-making. But it’s difficult to break through into the pop mainstream, especially as a French-language vocalist, and all that Avril lacked was perhaps the attention-grabbing innovation and eccentricity of her successful francophone contemporaries such as Christine and the Queens and Stromae. In all other ways, Instantanés is nothing short of an indie-pop masterclass: a blueprint for contemporary catchy, yet sensitive, vocal music. The production throughout is pared-back but precise, leaving as much room as possible for Margaux’s ethereal, melismatic vocal melodies to shine and her potent lyrics to punch through with a clarity that is somewhat uncharacteristic of French chanson. On Lunatique she evokes in her poetic style a Jekyll-and-Hyde-type monster from love and desire: ‘[I love you in the daytime, but what about the night?/Your alter ego, your desires/…The mask falls and you flee]’.* Here she highlights the dichotomy that forms the spine of the album - the two sides to love: on the one hand, being totally bound to someone and needing them like “oxygen”; on the other, having to witness the worst of someone, like “touching the Sun”. The lyrics’ metaphors throughout the album evoke this binary: day and night; rain and clear skies; passenger and conductor; hope and despair. Instantanés may not have launched Margaux Avril to stardom, but as an isolated project it remains, for me, a compelling hidden gem.
Hidden Highlight: Paris
*Translations are my own
La Claque
Oxygène
L’Air De Rien
C’Était La Nuit
Lunatique
Insatisfaite
Toucher Le Soleil
Côté Passager
Paris
Encore Une Histoire
L’Espoir